


Another Kind of Scar

by Rainne



Series: To Live Without the Sun [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Existential Angst, Hydra (Marvel), Multi, Past Brainwashing, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-22
Updated: 2014-12-01
Packaged: 2018-02-26 13:19:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 46,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2653406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rainne/pseuds/Rainne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Scars are just another kind of memory." - M.L. Stedman</p><p>The former Winter Soldier and the former Snow Maiden struggle to acclimate themselves to the new world they find themselves living in: a world in which they are no longer subject to the whims of HYDRA or Department X, but also a world in which they are no longer each other's sole companion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So many of you asked for this, and I am so grateful. I really love this odd little AU, and I'm so gratified that it seemed to resonate with so many of you as well. I hope you'll enjoy this sequel!

**December 2012**

**New York, NY**

Darcy's eyes fly open, but the rest of her body does not move. Her breathing remains slow and calm, even as her vision blurs, and for a long moment she isn't sure what has happened to her.

_Dream._

She closes her eyes again, wondering a little bit at the trickles of warmth that run down from their corners, across her face, to soak into the pillow under her cheek. This is the third time this week that she's woken up crying, and she takes a long, slow breath before sliding out from under James's cybernetic arm. Her feet sink silently into the thick pile of their bedroom's carpet, and she pauses only long enough to slip on a tee shirt in deference to their erstwhile roommate's sensibilities before gliding out of the bedroom and padding down the hall to the kitchen.

The apartment is dark except for the Christmas tree and the light over the stove; none of them actually need the light to see by, but Steve likes it because he says it makes the place seem more warm. Whatever that means. She gives him a mental shrug and passes it by, pulling open the refrigerator and staring into it for a long moment, not really seeing anything in front of her. She shuts it again, and she sighs softly.

"Can't sleep?" Steve asks from the couch.

She isn't startled. "Dreams," she says succinctly, knowing he'll understand. She purses her lips for a moment, considering, and then she opens a cupboard, reaching into a box. "Chocolate?"

"Sure," Steve replies.

Darcy grabs two of the little plastic containers and pads across the kitchen to the Keurig machine, switching it on and waiting patiently for the water to heat up before popping the first container into the slot. A few minutes later, she pulls out the bag of mini marshmallows and drops a few into each cup of hot chocolate. Then she brings the two cups into the living room, handing one to Steve and cradling the other one in her hands as she folds herself up into the big leather easy chair and stares at the tree until it turns into a multicolored blur.

They sip their chocolate in silence for a few minutes before Steve speaks. "Do you mind if I ask?"

She considers the question from a variety of angles before finally shrugging softly. "I don't know what it is," she says. "It's an op, but it's from the wrong perspective, and it's not anything that makes sense as any op I ever worked."

Steve cocks his head a little bit. "What do you mean, the wrong perspective?"

She sighs, taking another sip of her chocolate. "It's a hit," she explains. "Only instead of being the one who comes in the door, I see it like it's someone coming in the door on me."

"Are you shot?"

Darcy shakes her head. "That's the weird thing. There's a man and a woman there who I don't know, and  _they_ get shot, but I don't."

Steve frowns. "What happens to you?"

She opens her mouth to reply, then stops, frowning as well. "I... think they... grab me?"

"And do what?"

She shakes her head. "I don't know," she admits. "That's when I wake up."

Steve sits back against the couch cushions, studying the drink in his hands before looking back up at her. "Well, Darcy, I'm no expert," he says, "but is it possible that you're remembering? When you were kidnapped?"

She opens her mouth to scoff at the idea - it's been a full two years since she and James woke up and she hasn't remembered anything yet, even though James has regained almost all of his memories. It's ridiculous to think that she's ever going to remember anything more than what she already has. Except that... except that...

"It... maybe?" she admits, forcing herself to be honest despite everything in her that wants to deny it. "I'm... I'm not sure."

"Is there an op report on your kidnapping?" Steve asks. She can see the discomfort on his face even as he states the blunt question; his instinct is to be more circumspect, to couch the query in more gentle terms, but she's told him enough times to stop it - euphemizing the matter is simply a waste of energy - that he's finally listening.

She nods. "There is. It's pretty straightforward." She accesses the file with her implant, the scanned image overlaying Steve's concerned face in her visual field. "It says here that once they had decided I could be a useful tool for controlling the asset - which is to say, James - that they directed my father to a motel in town and had us followed to see what room we checked into. Then just after midnight, a four-man team entered the room, eliminated the parents, retrieved the target, and returned to base. No casualties."

"Except for your parents," Steve points out.

She feels her lips twitch. "No  _unexpected_ casualties."

Steve winces slightly. "So, a motel room, right?" he says, making a valiant attempt to rally past the awkward exchange. "A motel room, with your parents, they get shot, and you get taken? I know it's hard to accept, but I think you might be remembering that."

Darcy takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment, and then lets it out again slowly. "You're right," she admits. "It is hard to accept. Not for the reason you think, but... yeah." She tips her head back against the smooth leather, staring up at the darkened ceiling. "I didn't think I'd ever get anything back. I figured that whatever they did, the serum, the wiping, all of that, I figured that it just scarred whatever parts of my brain so much that the memories were just gone. So getting them back  _now_ ? That's just... inconvenient."

Steve laughs softly. "I can see where it would be," he agrees. "But on the other hand..." He pauses, bites his lip. "Well, I don't know," he says suddenly. "I started to say, 'Isn't it a good thing that you're finally getting your memories back?' But then it occurred to me that it might not be. That you might not want them."

She smiles slightly. "I don't  _not_ want them," she says, considering the matter carefully. "But that's not the same as saying that I  _do_ want them."

Steve nods like he understands completely. Darcy thinks it's possible that he actually does. His memories aren't a field of wildflowers either. She sighs softly. "I just wish it didn't make me feel..." Her voice trails off.

"Feel what?" he asks softly.

She sighs again, shaking her head, and stands, wandering over to the window. She stares out at the city silently for a long moment. "I'm not sure I can explain it," she finally says. "But it's like... it's like as long as I don't remember, I can... pretend? Sort of. Like I know what I'm doing."

"I... don't really know what you mean," Steve admits.

Darcy turns to face him. "I don't know how to be a person," she admits. "I've always been..." She waves a hand expressively. "A science experiment. An asset. A  _thing._ And that wasn't so bad before, because for a long time, James was the same as me." She pauses, swallowing hard. "But he's changed."

"He's still your husband," Steve points out.

"Yeah, but he's not the same." Darcy shakes her head. "He's not the same as me any more. He's got memories and a past and... and  _you._ " She swallows hard. "And please understand, Steve. You're his friend. You're  _my_ friend, too, I think, most of the time. But you're  _his_ friend, first and foremost. You're his  _past._ You're this huge, tangible link to the fact that he existed before HYDRA and he continues to exist after HYDRA, and he's even still mostly the same person you knew before, with some allowances for trauma and life experiences."

Steve nods, reluctantly accepting the point. "But he still loves you," he offers.

"I know he does," Darcy says. "But he used to be the same as me, and now he's not any more. And it's hard being the only one who  _isn't._ "

"What do you mean?" Steve asks, his brows furrowing together.

"I mean what I say," Darcy replies. "James is a person now. He used to be a person, before, and now he's a person again. But I'm not." She turns her back on him, staring out at the city again. "I'm not a person, and I haven't been for a long time. And I was okay with that when I still had him, but now I don't any more."

"Of course you do," Steve rebuts, coming up behind her. He rests a tentative hand on her shoulder. "Darcy, you will always have him. He's not going to leave you."

"He already has," she says softly. "He just doesn't know it yet."

"Darcy," Steve says firmly. He turns her to face him, gripping her shoulders and giving her a gentle shake. "He hasn't. And he isn't going to. I promise."

She gives him a slight smile. "You can't promise that," she says. "You don't know."

"I don't care," he replies immediately. "I know  _him._ I know how much he cares about you. Hell, I see the way he looks at you, like a man in the desert looks at water. He's not going anywhere, Darcy."

She swallows hard. "I just don't understand it," she admits finally, looking away from him.

"What don't you understand?" Steve asks. "I'll explain it. In small words, if I have to."

She rubs a hand over the words on her chest, and she murmurs, "I don't understand how I have a soul mark. How I have a soul mate."

"Why wouldn't you?" he asks.

She shakes her head. "Because I don't have a soul," she admits. "I haven't had one since I was a child. They burned it out of me along with everything else."

"That's bullshit." James's voice cuts harshly across the quiet living room, and both Steve and Darcy startle, turning toward him. He shrugs. "I woke up and you weren't there," he says quietly.

"Sorry," Darcy says.

He shakes his head. "No need to apologize, кукла. You can't sleep, you can't sleep. I get that." He comes to her and Steve steps aside, letting James wrap his arms around her and pull her close. "What's brought this on?"

She shrugs, resting her head against his chest. He rubs her back with his human hand. "Talk to me, кукла," he whispers. "I can't help if you don't tell me what's going on in your head."

"You deserve better," she finally admits, her words muffled against the fabric of his shirt. "You deserve more than me. I'm no good for you any more."

"That's bullshit," he says again, his voice less harsh this time but no less certain. "You're perfect for me, sweetheart. You always have been."

" _ That's _ bullshit," she replies. "I was a burden on you from day one, and you know it."

His hands come up to cup her face, and he stares down at her with a fierce expression she's only seen a few times. "You have  _ never, _ " he says firmly, "been a burden on me. Darcy... you  _ saved _ me."

"The hell I did," she says, swallowing hard. "I mouthed off to a fucking HYDRA agent about my soul mark and all I managed to do was get my parents killed so both of us could spend fifty years in and out of fucking cryo."

"That's not your fault," James says firmly. "You didn't know he was a HYDRA agent, and Darcy, you  _ did _ save me." He swallows hard, glancing toward Steve before focusing back on her. "I told you once, what it was like for me before you came. Do you remember that?"

"Sort of," she admits. "Not a lot of the details."

"Well, I'll tell you," he says. He takes her hand and leads her back to the armchair, sitting down and pulling her into his lap. "You can stay if you want, Steve, but it'll probably hurt."

Steve shakes his head. "I'm good," he says, the closest he can come to admitting that he doesn't actually want to know what happened to James while he was in HYDRA's hands. He retreats down the hall, and James waits until he hears Steve's bedroom door close before he begins speaking.

"I don't remember much," James admits, putting his feet up on the coffee table and tilting Darcy so that she's lying against his chest, her forehead tucked into the side of his neck. "I remember falling off the train. I have vague snapshots of the first lab, where they put my arm on. I have... bits and pieces of the conditioning, from in between wipes. Not much. I don't think I'll ever get much of that back, and I don't want it anyway." He cups the back of her head with his human hand, carding his fingers into her hair. "But I remember being lonely. I was constantly surrounded by people, but they hated me and they hurt me and I was so fucking lonely and desperate for someone who'd just... just be nice to me. Touch me in a way that didn't hurt. Talk to me like I mattered. Anything, really. I was desperate for human contact."

She wraps her arm around his torso, holding him close. She doesn't ever want him to feel like that again. He presses a kiss to the top of her head, and he says, "Then you came."

"I don't remember," she admits.

"I do," he says. "I remember when we met." He laughs softly. "God, you were so young. And you terrified me."

She raises her head, looking at him in surprise. "Me?"

"You. You were something like twelve years old, and I was on a mission. I was tucked up behind a building on a highway outside Chicago, and I shot out the tires on a Town Car, caused an accident and killed a couple of labor leaders. And I'm breaking down my gun and suddenly there you are, staring at me like... well, staring at the gun, actually." He chuckles. "And I said to you, 'It's called a Dragunov, кукла. Don't worry, I doubt you'll ever see one again.'" His fingers trace the collar of the shirt she's wearing, and she feels her skin tingle under his touch, where his words mark her skin. "And you said that was your soul mark, and you thought I was your soul mate, and I said that was impossible."

She blinks. "You did?"

He nods. "I did. I said that was impossible, and you asked why, and I said because I couldn't have a soul mate, because I didn't have a soul." He cups her cheek with his metal hand. "I thought they'd burned it out of me along with everything else."

She closes her eyes against the tears, and he pulls her close, wrapping his arms around her. "They didn't," he whispers. "And they didn't do it to you, either. I promise, кукла."

"Sometimes it feels like they did," she whispers against his skin. "Sometimes I think they took me away and all they left behind was a clockwork monster."

"Well, they didn't," he murmurs. "And I know they didn't, because if they had, I wouldn't have you on my arm dottin' your Is with little hearts."

She laughs wetly into his shoulder. "I was thirteen and you're an asshole."

"You were thirteen," he repeats, "and you saved me."

She swallows hard. "I wish I could remember."

"I do, too," he admits, carding his fingers through her hair. "And I hope that you do, someday. But if you don't, I'll keep reminding you."

~*~

Everything is normal for the next few weeks. They make it through Christmas and New Year's with only one real issue, and that issue is more a matter of people being angry that Tony and Pepper didn't come to them for help – either with the Mandarin or with Tony's PTSD. Steve is beside himself over this for several days, and can be heard at odd times randomly muttering about the need for team-building. He threatens to sign the entire team up for "one of those newfangled team bonding retreat things" if anything like this ever happens again and Tony, giving every evidence of actual fear at that prospect, promises to ask for help when he should need it in the future.

Darcy's protege - a young cosmology grad from Cornell called Amelia - finally graduates from "intern's intern" to "actual intern". Darcy herself is promoted from "astrophysicist's intern and general dogsbody" to "Dark Mistress of the Science Labs" - that's an actual thing that Tony puts on an actual plaque on her actual office door - and she's suddenly in charge of things like budgeting and departmental human resources and being the person Pepper calls when Tony needs to be forcibly restrained from doing something ridiculous.

To be perfectly honest, she can do most of that job without even moving; her direct connection to JARVIS makes budgets and supply orders happen at the literal speed of thought. She actually spends most of her time on Facebook.

When she first encountered it, the entire idea of Facebook made her skin crawl. Did none of these people realize how much of their personal lives they were exposing to the universe? She slowly came to realize that they did not, and even as she was bemoaning the lack of privacy, she was finding ways to exploit the mass availability of personal data. It rapidly became one of her favorite ways of ferreting out HYDRA agents.

So now she spends her days on Facebook, digging through profiles and hunting for signs of HYDRA everywhere she can hope to find it. And she finds it in a terrifying number of places. It exists in the shadows of racist message boards and in the donor lists of extreme right-wing political organizations; it exists in the upper echelons of government and on the faculty rosters of a terrifying number of bioengineering programs. It exists in the U.S. and it exists in Europe; it even exists on the Board of Directors of the Maria Stark Foundation. (She sympathizes with Tony when he goes ballistic over that.)

When she finds it on the Board of Directors of Darcy's Home - the Darcy Lewis Memorial Foundation for Missing and Exploited Children - she sympathizes even more. "It's just the kind of shitty irony that a HYDRA operative would find funny," she tells Tony over tumblers of Scotch on the penthouse deck that night. "They kill the people you love, and then they tell you how sorry they are about it. Or worse, pretend like they want to help bring the killer to justice. That's the kind of thing HYDRA's good at."

"Fuckers," Tony says succinctly.

She toasts him with her glass and takes a sip.

He leans against the deck railing, staring down at the city. "Do you know," he says after a long moment of silence, "who it was?"

"Who what was?" she asks, having lost the plot momentarily.

"Who killed my parents," he clarifies. He turns to face her, his eyes almost feverishly bright. "Was it one of you?"

"No," she says. Then she stops. "Well," she says, "it wasn't  _ me. _ Hold on a second." She closes her eyes and starts digging through the files she downloaded in D.C. "I think I have something on that, but I'm not sure."

"Take your time," he says, his voice tight.

She finally finds what she's looking for and she says, "It wasn't James."

"Who was it?"

"I don't know." She shakes her head. "I should clarify that I don't actually  _ have  _ anything on your parents' deaths. What I have is a bill of lading from the shipping company that moved the cryo-pods from one facility to another because the building was falling down. This was in 1993. There's a note that basically says the last time the building had been opened was to put us  _ into _ it in 1988. So essentially it couldn't have been him, because we were frozen at the time."

Tony nods. "If you find anything," he says, and then falls silent.

She nods back. "I'll tell Pepper and see what she thinks I should do."

Tony rewards her with a soft bark of laughter. "Yeah," he says, finishing his drink. "Yeah, that's probably exactly what you ought to do." He shakes his head. "God knows I'm not in a position to be rational about it. They were fucking awful parents, but they were the only parents I had, and I damn sure wasn't ready to lose them."

"Is anyone?" she asks logically. "I don't remember it, but I'm sure I wasn't ready to lose mine either. And when Steve talks about his mother, hell, it's been over a decade for him and sometimes I think he's just going to burst into tears when something reminds him of her."

Tony crosses the deck to the little outdoor bar and pours himself another drink, then leans against the bar and studies her. "How do you do it?" he asks quietly. "How do you separate yourself from it like that?"

She shrugs. "There isn't anything to separate  _ from, _ " she says. "There's nothing there."

"No emotions? No feelings? Nothing? Not even a mild irritation?"

Darcy sighs, leaning back against the railing. "Do you have any memories of being born?"

"No," he says. "I don't think there's anybody who remembers that."

She says, "And what are your feelings about your birth?"

"Well..." He pauses, considers. "Aside from being kind of glad nobody dropped me on my head while it was happening, I guess I don't really have any feelings about it."

She waves a hand at him. "See?"

"But...  _ nothing _ ?"

She shakes her head. "Nothing."

"What's the earliest thing you remember?" he asks.

The dream flashes briefly through her mind, the sound of the gunshots and the woman screaming. "Leningrad," she says. "When I was a teenager."

"Is that when you trained with Romanoff?"

She nods. "Natalia was the top of our year-group. If you wanted to advance, she was the one to beat. Yelena and I competed for second place, but Natalia was always the best of us."

"Not always," Natasha disagrees as she steps out the door. She nods at Tony, then glances back over at Darcy. "You far exceeded me on the shooting range."

Darcy smiles a little bit. "I suppose I did, didn't I? Hand-to-hand was always your specialty."

"Which is why I was picked for Black Widow training and you were not," Natasha agrees. "You lacked the precision."

"Bullshit," Darcy replies. "I can put a bullet up a squirrel's ass from five hundred paces; I have all the precision I need."

"That's a different kind, and you know it," Natasha replies, shaking her head. "Anyway, I saw James in the elevator. He asked me to tell you that he's making supper."

Darcy nods. She salutes Tony and Natasha both with her glass and finishes her drink, setting it aside on the table for the cleaning crew to pick up later. She crosses the penthouse to the elevator and gives Pepper a nod and a smile when the doors open. Pepper steps out and Darcy steps in and the car drops three floors before stopping. The doors open again, and Darcy steps out into her own living room. Clint is sitting at the island counter on the edge of the kitchen; she seats herself on the barstool beside him and nudges him with her shoulder. "Hey, Hawkeye."

"Hey, Snow Maiden," he replies, nudging her back. "You have serious face."

She blinks. "Is there such a thing as not-serious face?"

"Sure," he replies. "You have this face on like you're thinking really serious thoughts, that's all. Care to share?"

She glances up at Steve and James, who are watching her from the kitchen while trying to act casual. She sighs. "I found a HYDRA agent on the Board of Directors for the missing children's charity."

"The one your cousin set up?" James asks. He gives a low whistle. "Not cool."

"Tell me about it," she replies, slightly snappish. "I don't know what to do about it, but I want to do something. I feel like... I feel like I can't just let her  _ stay _ there. You know?"

"So, what's to do about it, then?" Steve asks.

Darcy chews her lip. "I don't know," she admits. She sits there for a moment, staring at her hands, and then she says, "I've... kind of been thinking about making contact."

She doesn't need to look up to see the men around her exchanging glances. She doesn't need to look at James to know that he thinks it's an incredibly bad idea. She doesn't need to look at Steve or Clint to know that they probably agree with James. But she can't think of anything else to do, and she can't just continue to let that HYDRA operative sit there and make a mockery of her.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she's almost a hundred percent sure now that she really is starting to remember.

That would be ridiculous.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok no, seriously, i love you guys.

**February 2013**

**New York, NY**

_The light that falls to the ground dapples the forest floor with patches of gold and brown. The leaves above are thick and wide, about half of them still brilliantly green, but the other half a gorgeous autumn mix of brilliant yellow and fiery orange, with the occasional splash of bright red mixed in. More leaves, brown and dead, crunch underfoot with every step._

_Nearby, a narrow but deep creek babbles along, its waters bubbling and singing over rocks and tree branches. The air holds a bite that promises cold to come, but the temperature is perfect at the moment for nothing more than sturdy boots and the thick, chunky sweaters her grandma likes to knit._

_On the other side of the creek, there is a girl with long brown hair. She is wearing bell-bottom jeans with fringe. She grins. "You're still jealous your mom won't let you wear bell bottoms, huh?"_

_ "She's such a  _ drag _ sometimes," is the reply. "She acts like it's such a huge thing. I just tune out after a while. She really harshes my groove." _

_The brown-haired girl laughs. "My mom says your mom's a hopeless square," she says in an almost confessional tone. "She says -"_

"She was born old and she never got over it."

James raises an eyebrow at her from across the room. "Who was?"

"Huh?" Darcy blinks. "Who was what?"

"Who was born old and never got over it?"

"My mom," Darcy replies. Then she blinks again, rubbing at her eyes. "Wait, what? What are we talking about?"

James gives her a smile, coming to sit on the coffee table in front of her as she straightens up, stretching her arms above her head. "You were talking in your sleep," he says.

"What'd I say?"

"First you said someone was such a  _ drag _ sometimes," he replies. "And then you laughed, and then you said 'she was born old and she never got over it.' And I asked you who, and you said your mom."

"Oh," Darcy says, considering that. She closes her eyes for a moment, trying to recall the dream; she remembers the light through the trees and the little creek, and she remembers - she  _ remembers _ \- "Oh," she says again. "That was my cousin."

"Oh?" He leaves it open in case she wants to talk about it, but she can tell he's curious and so she indulges him.

"Yeah, I was... I was remembering my cousin. Pamela. She..." She pauses, blinking in surprise as the full memory suddenly floods her mind. "Oh, my God. We'd gone to the family reunion. I was... I was eleven. And Pamela had new jeans. They were bell-bottoms, and I was jealous because my mom wouldn't let me wear hippie clothes. And Pamela said that her mom said that about my mom. That she was born old and never got over it." She smiles, just a little bit. "Pamela's mom was Aunt Gina. She was my mom's sister." She blinks at him in surprise. "I remember."

He reaches out and takes her hands. "Darce," he says softly, "I'm so glad you remember."

She nods, squeezing his hands gently. She's not so sure that she's glad. Remembering... remembering hurts. She swallows. "I was eleven," she says again. "That was in 1962."

He nods, looking sympathetic. He does, at least, understand that part. He understands what it means for something so long ago to seem like just yesterday... even if he doesn't understand what else it means.

She closes her eyes for a long moment, wrestling her emotions back into the steel box inside herself where she mostly tries to keep them. She doesn't want to think about the fact that she was only thirteen when she met him, when HYDRA took her and turned her into a killer. She doesn't want to think about how she spent her formative teen years in a training camp for Soviet operatives. She doesn't want to think about how HYDRA and Department X robbed her of any chance of a normal life, of ever being anything other than what they made her to be.

She can talk to him about the ache of missing memories. She can talk to him about the burn of lost time. But she can't talk to him about the theft of her  _ self _ , because he won't understand. He had a self before they took him, and he recovered it along with his memories when the wipes stopped. He remembers how to be a functional human being. She doesn't, and she never will. Even if she regains every scrap of memory she ever lost, the only personality choices she could manage would be a desperately outdated thirteen-year-old or a brainwashed killer. 

And even if she wanted to talk about the black hopelessness of that idea - which, to be honest, she really doesn't - she couldn't talk about it with him anyway, because he would only blame himself. Because HYDRA took her in the hopes of using her to control him, and it worked, and he would take that on himself when it's her own fault for letting them know that she is his soul mate in the first place.

She forces every one of those thoughts away and opens her eyes again, giving him a weak smile. "Hungry?" she asks. "I'll start dinner."

He raises an eyebrow. "Darce?"

She shakes her head, giving his hands another quick squeeze before letting them go. She stands up and rounds the couch, heading for the kitchen. "Nope," she says. "Really not having this conversation right now."

He sighs. "Darce."

She stills in the doorway. "No, James," she says, and though her voice is soft, it's firm. "Just... no."

He sighs again but lets it go, and she's grateful. She really can't take it right now. Possibly not ever.

_~*~_

She spends several days brooding over the new memory, though she refuses to admit it to anyone. She finds herself sitting in her office with her eyes closed, replaying that memory over and over when she ought to be working, and though she chastises herself for getting off-mission, it doesn't really seem to help. She stays distracted, and nothing really helps until about a week later, when she gets a new memory. It is her thirteenth birthday, and her cousin Pamela is in the memory again. This time, she and Pamela are in a suburban back yard, playing with a dog her brain identifies as an Irish setter. Pamela is wearing bell bottoms again; this pair has a variety of brightly-colored patches sewn on. The burn of jealousy in this memory is even stronger than before, and when she comes out of it, she makes the connection.

It's the jealousy. That thick burn of jealousy that she's been struggling against in relation to James: that's what the connection is between the two memories. She stares blankly at the wall for a long moment, considering this information. Is it possible that emotion is the key to unlocking her memories after all?

She considers this idea, turning it over and over in her mind for a long few minutes. Then she decides to try an experiment. She thinks about emotions. A strong emotion would probably work best, for the purposes of inciting a memory, and she considers what emotions people generally consider "strong." She then considers which of those she thinks she might be capable of feeling in any strong way.

She eventually settles on fear. She knows fear - knows it well. She closes her eyes, visualizes the chair. Thinks about the feeling of its seat beneath her thighs, the way the restraints would clamp around her arms, the way the armature whirled and the electricity spiked before it clamped down on her head and shot pure fire through her brain. She thinks about the times she's had to watch James be wiped after a mission, even when they weren't going into cryo; the way he screamed and she stood by and watched, knowing the agony and anticipating her own turn. She thinks about the times James has had to watch her be wiped, and the desperation in his eyes. She thinks about lying on the table in the little lab in Istanbul for the last upgrade on her implant, staring helplessly up at the ceiling as Aronov and the other technicians strapped her down to prevent involuntary movements.

_She's walking barefoot up a hallway, surrounded by soldiers. There's something hard - the barrel of a gun - pressed into her back. She doesn't know where she is. They pass several doors before the man in front of her stops and opens one. She's shoved through the door, and she stumbles forward several steps before she's able to stop. She stares in shock at the man before her. It is her soul mate, the man from before, from the rest stop, the man with the Dragunov._

_He has his shirt off, and she can see that his whole left arm and shoulder are made of metal. The seam where metal meets skin is made of red and angry scars, and she thinks for a moment that it must have hurt badly. Then she meets his eyes, and she sees the same shock on his face that she imagines must be on hers. He was not expecting to see her here. She wonders if he forgot about her already._

She blinks, shaking her head slightly. "Well," she says softly, "that was something."

She takes several deep, cleansing breaths, and then she stands, pushing away from her desk. "JARVIS," she says, "I'm going to go for a walk. I need to clear my head. If anyone needs me, would you please have them call me?"

"Of course, Miss Lewis," JARVIS replies.

"Thank you," she says. She grabs her coat and leaves her office, heading downstairs in the elevator. When she reaches the lobby, she dithers for a moment, her eyes flicking between the front doors and the belowground entrance to Grand Central Station. She eventually decides on the doors; it's definitely winter in New York, but the cold will help clear her head.

She starts walking, her hands balled into fists and jammed into her coat pockets, her shoulders hunched, and her head down as far as it can be while she still keeps an eye on her surroundings. She isn't paying attention to where she's going, exactly, but she's also not in the mood for a mugger or a pickpocket to catch her off guard. She might hurt someone.

She pauses for a few minutes at a playground, watching a few hardy children chase each other through the churned-up snow. A man she assumes is their father stands nearby, hunched deep in his own winter coat, and he gives her a friendly nod even as he watches her carefully. She approves, and nods back. "Getting about time for school to let back in, isn't it?" she asks.

He laughs. "Not soon enough for me," he admits. "They're going stir crazy in the apartment all day, and I can't blame them, but it's just too damn cold to be outside all the time. Plus the little one has asthma, and too much cold's not good for her lungs."

Darcy nods, smiling slightly as she watches them; the game has changed and they are now pelting one another with snowballs. The man eyeballs her for a minute before saying, "Got any of your own?"

"Me? No." Darcy shakes her head, resisting the instinctive urge to cover her abdomen with her hands. "I, um. I can't have kids." Then she winces internally. Why did she say that?  _ Way to make things awkward. _

The man nods, though. He doesn't apologize or spout any platitudes. Instead, he says, "I can't either."

She blinks in surprise, glancing over at him, and he gives her a slight, self-deprecating smile and a half-shrug. "The oldest one came with my wife. The other two are adopted."

"Ah." She turns her gaze back on the children; the older two are now hoisting the youngest one up onto the roof of the frozen climbing structure. "Oh," she says. "There's a broken limb in the offing over there."

He turns back to them just in time to see the youngest scrabble for a hold on the structure's slick roof. "Madison!" he bellows. "Get her down from there!"

Darcy laughs softly as the man takes off across the playground. She watches until the children are all safely on the ground again, and then she turns, heading back up the sidewalk. Her shoulders are a little less hunched this time, her steps maybe a bit lighter, and she thinks again for perhaps the thousandth time about the empty bedroom in their apartment. About the fact that once Steve and Clint finally get it together and commit themselves totally to one another, there's going to be two more empty bedrooms in their apartment and a lot more quiet spaces.

James wants kids. She knows this. She thinks that James has probably always wanted kids. And she knows he'd make a good father, despite – or possibly because of – everything that's been done to him. She knows he's a good man. He deserves the chance, and there are plenty of kids out there who deserve the chances that she and James could give them.

But James refuses to bring up the topic, even though she knows he thinks about it a lot. He won't talk to her about it, and the one time she broached the subject with Steve, he said it was because James didn't want her to feel pressured into something she wasn't ready for.

She frowns as she considers this. Since they joined up with the Avengers, Steve has slowly started serving as almost a go-between for her and James, and that's not fair to him. She sighs, adding that to the list of things she and James really need to sit down and talk about.

She can't remember the last time they really talked, and that's something else that bothers her. They used to talk all the time, on quiet nights in the German forest or sitting on the roof of Karpov's house, overlooking Istanbul, or even under the stars in the New Mexico desert. They used to know each other inside and out; she used to be able to anticipate his very breath. But since they joined up with the Avengers - she is resolutely avoiding using the phrase  _ since Steve came back _ because it's not Steve's fault - that's changed. They've talked, but they haven't really  _ talked _ . 

And that, she thinks, is maybe her own fault. James has tried, but she hasn't allowed it. She wonders for just a second how badly she's hurt him as she struggled through her own pain.

Darcy stops in her tracks, stepping out of the way of pedestrian traffic, and pulls out her StarkPhone. She opens a video call and waits through the beeping until it connects. He looks surprised but pleased to hear from her. "Hey," he says, and then he squints at the screen. "Where are you?"

"I don't know," she says. "Downtown somewhere. I went for a walk."

"You okay?"

She swallows hard. "Not really," she admits. "I'm trying to clear my head, but it's not working so well. I just... I just keep thinking of all the different ways I'm fucking this up." She swallows hard, closing her eyes for a second, and then she opens them again and looks at him. "I just wanted to tell you that I love you," she says finally. "And I'm sorry, and I'm going to try to do better."

"Darcy," he says softly. " Кукла."

"No, I mean it," she says, leaning back against the rough brick of a nearby building. "I've been all up inside my head for awhile now and it can't have been easy for you, and I just want you to know that I'm  _ aware _ of it and I'm going to try and change my behavior. Okay?"

"Okay," he says, shrugging slightly. "Whatever makes you happy."

"No," she says. "What makes  _ us _ happy." She smiles slightly. "I love you."

"I love you, too, кукла," he tells her. "We'll talk more tonight, yeah?"

"Yeah." She smiles. "Go back to work."

He grunts, gives her a smile, and disconnects. She sighs, tucking her phone back into her pocket. She leans her head back against the wall for a moment, and then she straightens. And blinks in surprise at the sign she sees in the window across the street.

_Darcy's Home._

"Well, shit," she mutters to herself. She's known the place was here, but she hasn't been in this direction - she rarely leaves the tower these days, and when she does, it's usually in company and they usually either stay in midtown or leave via Quinjet. Now here she stands in Alphabet City, staring at the front door of the nonprofit that her cousin runs - the one with a HYDRA operative sitting on the board.

She considers this.

Maybe this is something she can do: make contact with her cousin, reconnect with her past. Maybe that could be something that would help her get past the stumbling blocks she keeps tripping on, the ones where she feels adrift and unmoored in this big world with nobody to cling to. Because sure, she has James, but it used to be that James clung back, and now that they've joined up with the Avengers -  _ because it's still not Steve's fault  _ \- he reaches out to other people, too. Maybe she could do this; she could connect with her family again, and give them the answer to their long-term mystery as well as helping herself at the same time. Maybe that could be a good thing.

Maybe it could also blow up in her face, but Darcy isn't going to think about that possibility. Not right now. Not unless she has to. She straightens up, firms up her jaw, and crosses the street before she has a chance to second-guess herself. She pushes the door open and steps inside.

The desk is occupied by a young man in hipster dress; she braces herself for rudeness but instead is greeted with a smile. "Hi," he says. "Welcome to Darcy's Home. What can we help you with?"

"I, um. I'm looking for Pamela Leitner." She pauses, remembers that Pamela is married. "I mean, Pamela Shore. The director."

The young man tilts his head slightly, his smile going a little wary. "I'll check and see if she's in," he says. "Can I have a name to give her?"

She bites her lip, suddenly nervous. "I, um." She can't remember ever feeling this nervous before in her life, and tries to imagine the look on Winter Soldier's face if he saw her floundering like this.  _ This is why you build your cover before you start your mission, idiot, _ his voice says in her head. She gives up. "Tell her I'm here about her cousin." When the young man gives no indication that he's going to move from his desk, she adds, "the one that's been missing since '64. I have... I have information."

"Uh- _ huh. _ " The young man remains very still for a long moment, then he finally stands up, and all pretense of politeness is gone. "Stay here," he says flatly, and he disappears through a doorway.

A few minutes later, he comes back again, looking unhappy. "You have five minutes," he says. "And I have the cops on speed dial."

"You won't need them," Darcy says. She holds up her hands to show that she's unarmed. "I promise."

"Sure," he snorts, but he steps out of the doorway. "End of the hall."

"Thank you." Darcy straightens her coat and her shoulders and walks down the hall with the same pit in her stomach that she always used to feel when she knew she was going to the chair.  _ Why? _ she asks herself as she pauses and takes a deep breath outside the office door.  _ It's not like this woman is going to hurt you. If she tried, you could break her neck as easily as breathing. What do you think is going to happen to you in there? _

She finds that not being able to answer that question actually makes the nerves worse, so she taps on the door frame and steps inside.

The woman behind the desk is standing up.  _ Good idea, be on the same psychological level. Well done, Pamela, _ Darcy thinks. She takes a moment to study the woman's face. Yes, this is definitely Pamela. She can see the same facial features, the same eyes. She can see the shining glint of the young girl buried deep behind the pain this woman is trying to mask. This is her cousin. Darcy Lewis would know Pamela Leitner anywhere. She steps forward and offers her hand. "Hello."

Pamela does not take the offered hand. "Say what you came to say," she says.

The hostility in Pamela's voice is actually somewhat unexpected, and Darcy blinks. "Have I offended you?" she says. "If so, I apologize. Should I not have come?"

There is a moment of brittle silence, and then Pamela bends, just slightly. "No," she says. "I just... you caught me by surprise. Nobody's claimed to have any information about Darcy in a very long time, and the ones who used to were all crackpots." She gestures at one of the chairs in front of her desk. "Please, sit down."

Darcy sits, and Pamela sits as well, studying her. Darcy folds her hands in her lap. "I'm sorry anyway," she says. "I should have thought this through better. I ought to have realized that this would come as a shock, and... I don't know. Sent a letter or something first."

"It's all right," Pamela says. She shakes her head. "You know," she says softly, "you look just like her."

"Do I?" Darcy asks.

Pamela nods. "You really do." She swallows. "Are you... are you her daughter, then?"

"No," Darcy replies. She looks down at her hands for a moment, then back up at Pamela. "I need you to understand that what I'm about to tell you, I mostly know secondhand and not in very much detail. I won't be able to answer all of your questions, and the answers I can give you are probably not ones you're going to want."

"Is she dead?" Pamela asks. "We always figured she was, when she never came back. We thought after some time, maybe, but..."

Darcy shakes her head again. "No," she says. She swallows hard. "Wow, this is weirder than I expected. The thing is, Pamela..." She grits her teeth, suddenly  _ knowing _ that this is not going to go well. "I  _ am  _ her."

Pamela blinks at her. And then she says, "I'm sorry?"

"I am her," Darcy says again. "I'm Darcy."

Pamela uses two fingers to rub at the spot between her eyebrows. "My dear," she says, "I am sixty years old, and Darcy was a year older than me."

"I know," Darcy says. "Darcy Jo Lewis, born March 12, 1951, Racine, Wisconsin, to Michael Lewis and Carol Watkins Lewis. Carol Watkins Lewis had a sister, Regina Watkins Leitner, and that's your mother."

"Congratulations, you can trace a genealogy," Pamela snaps. "Darcy Lewis would have been sixty-one years old this year, if she was alive. So how exactly do you, who  _ might _ be twenty if you're a day, propose to explain that?"

"I was kidnapped on September twenty-second of 1964 by members of the militant supremacist group called HYDRA. They killed my parents and took me away to a facility outside Chicago, where I was kept locked up for several weeks. After a certain amount of psychological conditioning, my mind was wiped and I was cryogenically frozen."

Pamela sits there for a moment, studying her, and Darcy has just begun to wonder if she was going to accept the story when she says, "Get out."

Darcy nods and stands. She fishes a business card out of her pocket -  _ Darcy Lewis, Stark Industries, Security Specialist  _ \- and lays it on the desk. "If you decide you want to know more, this is where you can reach me." She turns and crosses the small office to the door, then stops in the doorway. "Tell me something, though," she says. "What was the dog's name?"

Pamela blinks at her. "What?"

"I remember that there was a dog. It was my birthday, I think my thirteenth, and you were wearing bell bottoms with peace signs on them, and we were playing with a dog. A big Irish setter. I just wondered what its name was."

Pamela blinks again. "Ringo," she whispers. "The dog's name was Ringo."

Darcy nods. "Do you know what happened to it?"

"We... we took him home with us," Pamela says, the words sounding almost forced. "After they disappeared. The neighbor had him, and we came and cleared out the house and took the dog with us."

Darcy nods again. "Good," she says. "I didn't remember it until recently, but it seemed like the kind of thing I ought to be worried about." She pulls her hat out of her pocket and drags it onto her head, tucking her hair up under it. "Thank you for your time. I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings." With a nod, she leaves the office and makes her way up the hallway. The hipster at the desk glares at her, and she pauses, offering him one of her cards. "Here," she says. "After she tears up the one I left with her, she might want this. Hold onto it for her."

He takes it, looking down at it, and then looks back up at her. "Security specialist?"

She smiles. "I'm a woman of hidden talents, Mr. Covington. Have a nice day."

As she steps out the door, she hears him say, "Hey, how did you know my name?" She doesn't stop to answer; she just makes her way back up the sidewalk as the snow begins to fall.

That night, she curls herself around James on their bed and says, "I'm not good at this."

"At what?"

"Feelings and things. That stuff. And being, you know." She waves a hand. "I don't know. An adult, I guess? I mean..." She pauses, swallows hard, tries to figure out how to express what she wants to say. "When they took you, you were older than I am now. You already sort of knew how to be a person, and what kind of person you were. But I don't have that. I was thirteen. I grew up in the fucking Red Room. I don't know how to be a  _ person. _ "

He reaches down and cups her cheek. "Then we'll work on that together," he says softly. He draws her face up to his and kisses her softly. "I just need you to talk to me, okay? Tell me what you're feeling. Let me help you with what you're going through. Let me be there for you. Okay?"

"I'll try," she promises. "Sometimes I don't know what I'm feeling, though. And I don't... I don't want to make you feel bad over things that aren't your fault."

"You can't make me feel anything, sweetheart," he tells her. "I feel what I feel and that ain't something you can control. Let me worry about me for now, okay?"

"It's my job to worry about you, Chefchen," she whispers, burying her face against his collarbone.

"Well, it's my job to worry about you, too, кукла," he says, carding his fingers through her hair. "So let me do my job, okay?"

"Okay."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little dip back into the darkness pool on this one, but all the gore is offscreen, so..... :)

**April 2013**

**New York, NY**

Tony is getting restless. He's spent three weeks dealing with lawyers behind closed doors, trying to find a legal way to oust the Foundation board member that they know is HYDRA, but there just isn't any way to do it. Unless he's voted out or can be publicly proved a HYDRA operative, he's just there, with his smug little smile at the fundraisers and his faux sympathy at the annual Maria Stark Memorial Gala. Darcy sympathizes, really she does, but she's also getting kind of tired of hearing about it.

It occurs to her one afternoon, in the middle of an unsatisfying firefight against a small-time idiot calling himself Carjack, that there is actually one way to handle things that's satisfactorily permanent. She tucks the idea away, shoots out one of Carjack's knees when he happens to move into her sight line, and then waits while Cap and Iron Man finish the clean-up.

From there, she begins to plan. At first, she thinks it should be a simple op; in and out, sometime between two and four in the morning, none the wiser. But then... then she pauses and she considers. She begins to wonder how much intelligence that single HYDRA operative might have access to: non-networked computers? Paper files? Information stored only inside his brain? And she changes her plans.

She is careful - so, so very careful. This kind of op is so much more dangerous in the modern world, where SHIELD and the NSA and the FBI are monitoring the airwaves and anything anyone does online is visible to everyone else. She can't do her planning from an actual computer, because those machines can be tracked and traced; she can't do it from within the tower, because if anyone is able to track and compile her searches, they'll know what she's up to. She has to leave the tower to do any searches at all, and she has to do each one on a different connection, and she limits herself to no more than three per day, with a three hour window between each search. So it takes time. Lots of time.

At last, though, as the cold of winter finally breaks and spring comes roaring in, she compiles everything that she needs, and she puts her plan into action.

When Carlton Becker enters his Park Avenue apartment on a particular night in early April, he is alone. His wife is away at a spa retreat, and his children are at boarding school. His mistress is in her own apartment in TriBeCa; he left her early because he had business to take care of. He crosses the darkened living room and enters his study, not bothering to close the door behind himself. He sits down at his desk, unlocks the drawer, and pulls out his laptop computer.

It boots quickly, he punches in the password, and then he punches in a secondary password that allows him to access a hidden program. There is a moment's pause while he connects to the network, and then he is looking into the face of Alexander Pierce. "Sir," he says.

"Becker," Pierce greets him. "How is everything going?"

"Slow, but I'm making progress," Becker replies. "Stark suspects nothing. I saw him last night at a Foundation event, and it was like we were old friends." He snorts. "I almost got an invitation into the tower to see the laboratories, but that flag-wearing menace called him away before I had the chance."

"Rogers will be dealt with," Pierce replies. "He's not your concern. You just get into that lab."

"I will, sir," Becker assures him. "You can count on me."

"Make sure that I can," Pierce says firmly. "If it turns out that I can't, well, you know what happens." The screen goes blank.

Becker sits back in his chair with an explosive sigh. And then he begins to struggle, but it's too late, because the cloth being held over his nose and mouth is soaked in chloroform. Snow Maiden has always felt that the old tricks usually worked the best, and she is also a big fan of the classics.

She waits until he stops struggling, and then she takes a moment to zip tie his hands to the chair's armrests and his ankles to its legs. Then she stuffs a clean handkerchief in his mouth, sets the chloroform-soaked cloth aside, and grabs the laptop in her gloved hands. She pops a USB drive into one of the slots on the side of the machine, and sets it to work mirroring everything in the computer's memory. Then she pulls the chair back from the desk, just enough to give herself room to work.

Becker begins to wake fairly quickly, and when he does, the first thing he lays eyes on is the Snow Maiden, who is seated on his desk, sharpening her knife. She looks up at him as he returns to consciousness, but she doesn't smile; it would be pointless behind her mask. Instead, she waits for him to speak. When he does, he realizes that there is cloth in his mouth, and he pushes it out with his tongue. "What do you want?" he asks.

"The usual," she replies in a German accent. "World peace. Fancy things. A massive fortune. A harem of pretty young boys to rub my feet and exclaim over my beauty." She pauses. "All of HYDRA dead at my feet."

"Cut off one head," he begins.

"Yes, yes, two take its place. How very predictable and tedious." She pauses again. "There's no need for you to try to find your cyanide pill, by the way. I took the liberty of removing it while you were unconscious." She holds up the little pill that she took out of his fake tooth. "So you might as well relax and get comfortable; you're not going to be leaving this conversation until I decide it's time."

"My - my wife will be home soon!" he exclaims. "She'll call the police!"

"Will she? And will that be before or after she's done fucking the masseuse at that spa in Saratoga Springs?" She cants her head, then reaches over and taps a nearby picture frame with the blade of her knife. "I'm pretty sure the girl is his, by the way. Those eyes are striking, aren't they? If it's any consolation, though, I'm almost certain both of the boys are yours."

His face goes bright red, his eyes bugging out, and he makes a strangled noise of rage. She reaches over and tips the picture frame forward onto its face. "There," she says. "Wouldn't want the children to see this, would we? It's going to be a messy business."

"I'm not going to tell you anything," he blusters.

She chuckles, and it sounds hollow behind her mask. "Oh, Carlton," she sighs. "You're so very wrong about that. You're going to tell me everything, Carlton." She stands, strolling over to him, and she reaches out, running the blade of the knife under his chin. "By the time I'm done with you, you're going to be  _ begging _ me to let you tell me things." She moves around behind him, picking up the chloroform cloth, and she knocks him out again. Then she cuts the zip ties, pocketing them quickly, and she pulls him out of the chair and drags him from the study.

When he wakes up again, he finds himself lying on his kitchen floor, stripped down to his underwear. He shifts enough to hear the sound of the plastic tarp underneath him. She watches from the doorway, and she sees the realization cross his face that things are about to get very bad indeed. She lets him struggle against his bonds for a moment, and then she enters the kitchen, keeping her steps deliberately light. She drops to her knees beside him, and she holds up the knife so that the moonlight shining in the window glints off the blade. "All right, Carlton," she says, keeping her voice very soft. "Let's begin."

~*~

It's late when she gets in, but Tony is awake. Tony is always awake, especially when Pepper's out of town, and she's in Los Angeles this week doing something at Stark Industries' west coast headquarters. Snow Maiden makes her way up the back stairs, working in tandem with JARVIS to mask her presence from the security cameras, and she enters Tony's lab from the back. He's got his back to her, doing something to one of U's support struts and bitching at DUM-E for how he holds the flashlight, and Snow Maiden waits until he gets to a stopping point before she says, "Tony."

Tony jerks, spinning around, and he stares into the shadows she's hiding in. "Darcy?" he asks. "The hell are you doing over there?"

"Turn the cameras off."

He pauses for a moment, then says, "JARVIS, privacy protocol three, authorization Stark-epsilon-four-two-bravo."

"Acknowledged," JARVIS replies, and there is suddenly a strange quality to the room that makes her shake her head slightly.

"I call it the Cone of Silence," Tony explains. "No interior recordings, and a mask of white noise and static to prevent audio or video recordings from outside. Now, what's going on?"

She takes a step forward, far enough that she's out of the dark, but not far enough that anyone passing the glass walls of the workshop might see her. "I've been assisting you in the lab this evening," she says.

She watches him as he takes in her all-black tactical suit, the mask still on the lower half of her face, and the blood spatter around her eyes and making darker splotches all over her suit. "I see that you have," he replies slowly. "And there's no security footage because we were working on a top secret project."

"That's correct," Snow Maiden says. She reaches into one of the tiny pockets of her tac suit and pulls out the USB drive on which she mirrored Becker's computer, offering it to him. "This needs a machine with no Internet connection. I haven't had time to investigate the full contents of the drive partitions."

He takes it gingerly. "I'll be sure to bleach this," he says.

"Do that," she replies. "And your fingers, too."

Tony studies the drive for a moment. "Can I get any kind of hints about what kinds of things I can expect to find on this drive?"

"Among other things, a direct connection to the Supreme Hydra on the American continent."

He gapes at her. "Seriously?"

Snow Maiden nods. "I watched him make contact. He told Pierce he'd been trying to get into the Tower to see what's going on in your workshop, but Rogers thwarted him."

"He?"

"Carlton Becker."

Tony is silent for a long moment before he says, "I see."

She nods. Then she says, "I need a shower."

"Yes, you do." He pauses, studying her. "Do I need to work you up a new suit? The one you're wearing might need to be incinerated."

She looks down at it, then back up at him. "Can you make me one out of that bulletproof material you use for Rogers's uniforms?"

"Sure," he says easily.

"I'd appreciate that." Darcy runs a gloved hand through her hair, then pauses and sighs at herself. "Great," she says softly. "Okay. I'm done. Lock that thing up somewhere."

"Done," Tony says. He studies her for a moment. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she replies. "Don't worry about me. This is what I do." And with that, she melts back into the shadows again.

~*~

When she steps off the elevator and into the open plan living room, Darcy is only a little surprised to see James sitting in the armchair under the window, reading something on his Kindle. He looks up when she enters, but she doesn't pause; she acknowledges him with a nod, and she moves past him toward the bedroom, reaching up to unclip the mask as she goes. He sits very still for a long moment, but she hears him stand up and start in her direction just as she reaches into the shower stall and turns on the hot water.

She strips quickly and efficiently, and by the time he enters the bathroom, she's already standing under the hot spray, lathering shampoo into her hair that makes the steam smell of tropical fruit. "Are you going to join me," she asks him after a moment, "or are you just going to stand there and stare disapprovingly?"

He's silent for a moment, and then he sighs and strips off. He folds his clothing neatly and leaves it on the counter, then pulls the glass door open and steps into the wide shower with her. "Where did you go tonight, кукла?" he asks softly.

"I dealt with a problem," she replies.

He turns her around so that her back is to him, squirts some of her body wash into his hands, and sets up a familiar combination of back-washing and backrub that never fails to make her very, very happy. "I think I need to know more than that," he says finally. "I need to know where you went and what you did."

She sighs, letting her head drop forward as he kneads the muscles at the base of her neck. "Carlton Becker," she finally admits.

It takes him a moment to remember who that is. "The HYDRA op on the Stark Foundation board?"

She nods. "That's the one."

He takes a very deep breath, letting it out slowly as his thumbs dig their way down either side of her spine. He catches a sensitive spot near the middle of her back and her legs go to jelly, but he catches her and draws her to the shower bench, seating them both so he can keep working on her back. "You're as knotted up back here as I get sometimes," he says.

"I don't like doing interrogations," she admits.

"But that's what you did tonight," he says softly, his breath brushing her shoulder blade as his hands span her back. "You interrogated Becker."

"It had to be done," she says. "We've hit a wall on the investigation, and Fury's dragging his feet. We needed something to push us forward."

"Did you get it?"

"Yeah. I got it." She sighs, resting her elbows on her knees and covering her face with her hands. "I got everything we needed."

"And Becker?" he asks, even though he doesn't need to.

"His office will file a missing person's report when he doesn't turn up to work," Darcy says, her voice muffled by her hands. "I don't imagine his wife will notice that he's gone, except that she'll have an easier time meeting up with her stable of harem boys, and his kids probably don't know him well enough to miss him."

"Ah." He presses under her shoulder blades with his thumbs, and she arches back with a soft cry of pleasure. "And Becker himself is...?"

"Here and there." She wants to smirk, but she's too busy panting as her muscles melt under his expert touch.

He bends her forward to rest her forearms on the bench, tucking himself up behind her and gripping her hips. "You and I are going to have a talk about you going off the reservation without any backup," he warns her. Her only reply is a soft whimper as he pushes inside of her, and he chuckles as he bends his body over hers and rewards her for a job well done.

~*~

A few days after Carlton Becker is reported missing by his brokerage firm, Advanced Idea Mechanics announces that it is partnering with Hammer Industries to, as Tony Stark puts it, "build a better Iron Man or something, hell, I don't know, I thought Justin Hammer was still in the federal pen but I forgot that rich white guys don't serve their full sentences in this country."

Tony's friend Rhodey, also known as War Machine, stares at him incredulously across the conference room where the Avengers and their adjacents have gathered to discuss the A.I.M./Hammer issue. "Man," Rhodey says, "if you don't shut up right now, I'm gonna walk over there and smack you."

"Huh," Clint murmurs from his seat beside Darcy, looking around the room slowly. "Now that you mention it, we don't look very inclusive, do we?"

"We are white like snow," Steve agrees. "At the risk of sounding insensitive, Rhodey, do you know anyone...?"

"You get a pass, this time, on account of being frozen seventy years and generally being not an asshole," Rhodey replies. "I know plenty of people. Do I know anybody who wants to put their ass on the line with a bunch of crazy white folks? Maybe. I'll ask around."

"Especially if you know any women," Natasha says.

Darcy nods in agreement. "Yeah, it's kind of a sausage fest around here." She starts to say something else, but there is a soft chime, and the conference room door slides open.

The young receptionist standing in the doorway looks very nervous, and he adjusts his glasses twice before speaking. "Excuse me," he says. "I'm very sorry to interrupt, but there's someone here for Miss Lewis."

Darcy feels her eyebrows climb up toward her hairline. "For me? I didn't have any appointments today, did I, JARVIS?"

"No, Miss Lewis," JARVIS replies.

She cocks her eyebrow at the receptionist. "It's not the fuzz, is it?" When he looks confused, she clarifies: "The fuzz. You know. The pigs. Smokey. Five-oh." She sighs at his politely blank expression. "The cops, dude!"

"Oh!" The young man's face clears. "No, Miss Lewis, it's a Pamela Shore. She said you'd know the name."

"I do, indeed," Darcy says. "Show her to my office, please, and give her something to drink, and I'll be there in just a few minutes." The young man steps back out with a nod, the door slides closed again, and Darcy says, "All right, let's get on with this."

"Right, so we need to get in there and figure out what they're up to," Steve says. "Suggestions on how we can manage that?"

"Well, we could have our resident walking Internet server hack in and figure out what's going on," Tony suggested.

"No can do, Tin Can," Darcy replies, sitting back in her chair. "Whatever it is, they've got it off the wide Net. I can't get access."

"What the hell do we keep you around for, then?" Tony grouses.

"Because I'm nicer to look at than you," Darcy shoots back, grinning.

"You're fired. Get out." He points at the door.

Darcy laughs, standing up. "I need to go see about this person in my office," she says.

"I'll come by when we're done here," James says. He gives her a look - he knows who Pamela is, and can guess why she's here. Darcy just shakes her head. She'll be fine. And if she's not fine, she can sneak out tonight and go kill a HYDRA operative or two, and she'll feel better. She ruffles his hair as she passes him, and the door slides open for her to leave the room.

She makes her way down the hall to her office and pushes the door open. Pamela Shore is sitting in one of the very comfortable leather chairs by the big window. Darcy says, "Hi."

Pamela, who was staring out the window, starts slightly, nearly spilling the cup of coffee in her hand. "Oh!" she says. "I didn't hear you come in."

"Sorry," Darcy says. "I forget to make noise sometimes." She pushes the door shut behind herself and crosses the room, sinking into the other leather chair and crossing her legs. "How are you?"

"Fine, fine." Pamela looks down at her coffee cup for a long moment, then back up at Darcy. "Are you really my cousin?" she finally says.

Darcy nods. "I'm really your cousin," she says softly. "I know it's hard to believe, but it's true."

"I just don't understand how this could happen. You... you were older than me, and now..."

"I know," Darcy says. She takes a deep breath. "I can't tell you everything - mostly because I don't remember it all - but I can tell you some things."

"All right," Pamela murmurs. "Tell me."

So Darcy does. She begins with meeting James, though she cautions Pamela that she doesn't remember this event for herself and is relying upon James's memory and the few notes available in her file. She recounts what she remembers of her kidnap, and glosses over her early captivity with a simple "Not much to tell about being locked up for however long I was locked up."

When she gets to her first encounter with the chair, Pamela stops her. "I... I don't understand this," she says softly.

Darcy bites her lip and looks up at the ceiling, considering how to handle the matter. Should she be delicate or blunt? She settles for blunt; vagueness is nobody's friend in situations like these. "It's a chair," she says finally. "They put you in it and they restrain you. And then they scan your brain and figure out where your memories are stored, and then they run electricity through those parts of your brain until the memories are gone. Well, I guess they're not gone; I'm starting to get them back. But it blocks them. I don't actually understand the science of it, but it's apparently the same concept behind electroshock therapy, only turned up to eleven thousand or so."

"And then they just... froze you?"

Darcy nods. "Cryogenics," she explains. "They built a pod, and they froze both of us. I came out the first time in the late sixties for training in Russia, and then again in the mid-seventies for more training and missions in Germany and throughout Eastern Europe. Then I was put away until the eighties, which I spent in the Middle East."

"So you... you're not..." She pauses, shaking her head for a moment as she tries to figure out what she wants to ask. "How old are you, then, Darcy?"

"I'm... not exactly sure," Darcy admits. "But I'm guessing twenty-four or twenty-five."

Pamela nods. "And you... you said they trained you?" She pauses, and a wry expression crosses her face. "Do I want to know what they trained you to do?"

Darcy laughs softly. "Probably not," she admits. "Let's go with a general sort of 'murder and mayhem' and leave it at that, shall we?"

Pamela shakes her head, her eyes going sad and dark. "Darcy," she murmurs. "God, we tried so hard to find you."

"Don't beat yourself up over it," Darcy says, reaching out impulsively and putting her hand on Pamela's wrist. "Seriously, don't. There was nothing you could have done. By the time anyone knew I was missing, I was already locked up  _ literally _ underground in a HYDRA base, and within just a few weeks I was in a cryo pod, getting shipped to Leningrad.  _ Really _ don't dwell on it."

"You should take your own advice, кукла," James's voice says from the doorway.

"I don't have to," Darcy replies easily. "I'm well versed in the ancient art of dishing out life advice that I have no intention of following."

James laughs softly, coming over to her side, and Darcy turns to Pamela as he rests his hip on the arm of Darcy's chair. "This is James," she says. "My soul mate and husband."

"Husband? You're married? When the hell did you have time to get married?" Pamela exclaims.

Darcy and James both laugh. "December of 1983," James explains. "Between freezes, in Istanbul."

"So you were frozen together?" she asks. When they both nod, she continues, "And you've been married for...?"

"Seven years this past December," Darcy explains. Then she adds, grinning, "And you would not  _ believe _ the math we had to do to figure that out!"

But Pamela is studying James's face. "Wait a second," she says softly. "I've seen you before."

And Darcy feels a new memory slot home, and she begins to laugh. "Oh, God," she gasps. "Oh. Oh, God, I remember."

"What do you remember, sweetheart?" James asks.

But Darcy is pointing a finger at Pamela. "Remember when I was ten, when you lived with us for a year?" Pamela nods, and Darcy says, "Remember how you did World War II in social studies? And your class watched those old newsreels that had Captain America in them? And you said Captain America was cute and all, but the  _ real _ dreamboat in that crowd was - "

"Bucky Barnes," Pamela finishes automatically. And then she stops, and she blinks, and she stares at James. "No," she says.

"Yes," Darcy replies, smirking and leaning against James's hip.

"No  _ way, _ " Pamela denies.

"'S true," Darcy assures her.

Pamela stares, her eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them for a very long moment. And then she reaches out and grabs Darcy's hands and she squeals, "Oh my  _ God. _ "


	4. Chapter 4

"I actually came by with a question," James asks once Pamela has quit squealing and Darcy has quit laughing.

She grins up at him. "What?"

"Clint and Steve want to know if we want to go to dinner tonight."

"Oh." Darcy considers. "As long as it's not the raw fish thing again. I can't wrap my head around that at all."

James shakes his head. "Clint wants to try that köfta place that just opened up around the corner."

"If it's not good, I'm entirely blaming him," Darcy warns.

James laughs. "He knows."

Darcy turns to Pamela. "Would you like to join us?"

"Oh, I'd love to, but I should really head home," Pamela says softly.

"You sure?" Darcy asks. "We'd love to have you come with us."

But Pamela shakes her head. "Kenneth really hates it when I spring plans on him like that at the last minute. Another time?"

"Sure," Darcy says, nodding. "Kenneth – that's your soul mate?"

"My husband," Pamela corrects her. "Neither of us have marks. You... don't remember?" Darcy shakes her head. Pamela just sighs softly and says, "You should come by and meet him." She smiles. "He's really great, he just has crippling social anxiety and needs time to mentally prepare any time he has to leave the house."

"Ugh, that sucks," Darcy says, feeling like _sympathetic_ might be the right note to strike. It seems to do well enough, because Pamela shrugs.

"We do what we can. And like I said, he's actually really great. We're very compatible, and he's great with the kids."

"Oh, you... you have kids?" Darcy manages, suddenly feeling like she's just taken a blow to the gut.

James rests his metal hand on her shoulder, squeezing warmly, but Pamela doesn't seem to notice. She's pulling her wallet out of her purse and handing Darcy a picture. "And grandkids, too, but they're not in this picture. The boys are Jacob, Andrew, and Thomas, they're thirty-seven, thirty-four, and thirty-two, respectively. And the girl..." She pauses, and gives Darcy a slight, sad smile. "The girl is Darcy. She's twenty-eight."

Darcy gives a soft laugh to cover up her discomfort. "God, how weird is that?" she says instead, glancing up at James. "She's named after me, but she's  _older than me._ "

James nods. "Yeah, that's weird, all right."

"Do... do you two have any children?" Pamela asks, clearly sensing that it's a touchy topic but wanting to know anyway.

Darcy shakes her head, pressing her lips together and turning to stare out the window for a moment. James answers for her. "They... made it so we can't," he says delicately, carefully avoiding the question of which of them has been sterilized. "And things have been a little... unstable for us, so we haven't really talked about options. We've got the space, though, so I figure once things get a little more settled, we'll see about it then."

For the first time, Pamela seems to really realize what it means to be so fully under the control of an organization like HYDRA. Her eyes narrow, and her gaze zeroes in on James's metal arm. "Did they do that, too?" she asks bluntly.

"Yep," James replies easily, nodding. "They didn't take the old one off – that happened in the fall that shoulda killed me – but they put this one on and they weren't gentle about it." He pauses, clearly wondering whether he should continue, how far he should go. "It wasn't no picnic," he says. "You need to be clear on that. It was fucking torture, every single day, because even when it wasn't  _actual_ torture, when it wasn't  _actually_ sitting in the chair and lettin' them run electricity through my brain or  _actually_ layin' on a lab table lettin' them do crazy mad scientist medical experiments on me, then it was either watchin' them do it to her, or knowin' if I stepped outta line, it wouldn't be me they'd punish. And knowin' they could decide to stick me in a freezer any damn time they wanted, and I wouldn't be able to protect her."

By the time he finishes speaking, Pamela's fingers are covering her mouth, her eyes wide with horror. "Oh," she whispers. "I... I see."

"No, you don't," James replies. "But that's okay. We don't want you to. I'll tell you, I'd rather go back there and spend the rest of my life in that place than to let somebody else spend a minute there. Especially her."

"Then you better make sure you don't go back," Darcy says, her voice low, and her hand gripping his calf tightly. "Because if you do, I'm going to follow you."

~*~

"Did you tell her about the HYDRA op on her board?" James asks as they leave the tower sometime later, heading up the street to the restaurant where they're going to meet Clint and Steve.

"No," Darcy replies. "There's nothing that can be done about it yet, and we don't want to let on that we know. The  _last_ thing I want is to see these guys go underground." She goes quiet for a moment and then says, "I'm getting concerned about the situation inside SHIELD, and I think we should talk about it with Clint and Natasha."

He looks down at her. "What's got you worried?"

"Fury," she replies. She chews her lip. "James, if Fury really didn't know about HYDRA infesting SHIELD, if he's really a good guy, if he's really what he says he is, then how come the energy weapons Steve saw on the helicarrier had HYDRA insignias on them?"

James's steps falter. "What?"

She blinks up at him. "Did he not tell you?"

He shakes his head. "No. They did?"

She nods. "He said when he found them, in the cargo hold, the boxes themselves were unmarked but the weapons had HYDRA insignia on them. Why would they have that? You'd think if HYDRA is really hiding inside SHIELD and they really don't want anybody knowing about them, they'd put a SHIELD insignia on their stuff. But they had the actual skull-head logo."

James's lips press together hard. "Let's go talk to Steve and Clint."

The new restaurant is a little bit of a dive by American standards, but that just makes Darcy excited; it looks on the inside a lot like some of the places she and James frequented in Istanbul, which gives her hope for the quality of the food. Clint and Steve are already there, tucked into a secluded booth in the back of the shop, and she and James slide in with them.

"Hey," Steve greets them, grinning broadly. He is also blushing pink, which is adorable. Clint's wicked little grin indicates that he probably said something dirty to Steve just before James and Darcy arrived, and Darcy continually finds it amusing that a man who fought in World War II and earned at least half his pre-war living by drawing Tijuana bibles can still be turned pink by dirty come-ons from his soul mate.

"You two are adorable," she says, as she almost always does. She can't help it.

Clint rolls his eyes. "You need to stop, Short Stack," he tells her. "You're embarrassing Steve."

"No,  _you're_ embarrassing Steve," Steve rebuts. "She's embarrassing  _you._ "

Darcy laughs, reaching across the table to bump fists with Steve. Then she settles back, letting the others take in the serious expression on James's face. "What's up, Bucky?" Steve asks.

"Stevie," James says softly, "tell me about those weapons you found on the helicarrier."

Steve frowns. "Sure. Um." He pauses, glancing at Darcy. "You don't have any paper in your purse, do you?"

"Steven Grant Rogers," Darcy says repressively, "do I carry a purse?"

He blinks. "Oh."

She laughs. "I do, however, carry a pen at all times." She produces it from her pocket, and hands him a napkin from the dispenser on the table.

"I usually do," Steve admits. "But I forgot my notebook at home." He bends his head and begins sketching quickly, and after a few moments he offers the napkin to James. "There's a basic outline," he says. "It was essentially the same as the energy weapons that HYDRA's soldiers carried in the war."

James examines the drawing and then says, "Was there any kind of logos on them?"

"Yeah, right there." Steve touches a spot on the picture of the weapon with the tip of the pen.

"SHIELD logo?"

Steve shakes his head. "HYDRA."

James glances at Darcy, who shrugs. "I told you."

James sighs, rubbing at his temple with his human hand. "Fuck."

"What's the matter?" Steve asks.

"Tell him," James says to Darcy.

Darcy opens her mouth to speak, but is interrupted by the arrival of the waiter. After a quick conferral, they decide to order a set of combo platters. The waiter leaves, and Darcy leans forward over the table, her eyes flicking back and forth between Steve and Clint. "I want to know, if HYDRA is so interested in staying under the radar and secret within SHIELD, why they would risk exposing themselves by having their own logo on their energy weapons. If the real SHIELD – the good, honest, whatever SHIELD – made those weapons, and if Nick Fury really is on the up-and-up about them like he claims, why wouldn't they have the SHIELD logo on them?"

"That's a damn good question," Steve says quietly, after a moment of thought. "I would've liked to have asked it at the time, but there were more pressing issues to handle, and I guess..." He looks down at the roughly-drawn image and shakes his head. "I guess it slipped my mind."

"In your defense," Clint says gently, "right after that, I did attack the helicarrier with a bunch of guys. And then there were aliens coming out of the sky. And then there was Bucky."

"Yeah, so nobody can blame you for being distracted," James asserts. "You kinda had a lot on your mind."

"Yeah, you know, how dare you try to deal with a huge alien army  _and_ a bunch of emotional trauma all in the space of one day while forgetting to confront the shadowy spy organization about its shadowy spy-ness," Darcy drawls, leaning back in her seat.

Steve coughs out a soft laugh at that, and his face, which had gone dark and broody, clears. "Thanks for puttin' it into perspective, doll," he offers.

She grins and winks. "Any time, big brother."

The conversation pauses again when the food comes, the variety of platters covering the table, and they all dive into it and it turns out to be delicious. Darcy lets the worry slip from her mind for just a little while, focusing instead on being in the moment and enjoying this time with her husband and their friends.

The next day, Steve falls off the radar for about five hours. James goes looking for him in the morning to spar, and he's nowhere to be found; Clint says he thinks maybe Steve's gone for a run, but Steve's running clothes are in the laundry and his shield isn't hanging on the wall or leaning against his bed. Calls to Steve's cell phone are routed directly to voice mail, and so around noon, James finally breaks down and asks Tony to track him. JARVIS reports that Steve's StarkPhone is inside SHIELD's New York headquarters, and has been since early morning.

Darcy and James exchange a worried look. "Surely he won't do anything stupid," Darcy says, putting a hand on James's arm.

"Oh, I'm sorry," James says. "I forgot we were talking about  _Steve Rogers,_ who was so fuckin' hot to go to war that he  _signed up to let Tony Stark's father experiment on him._ "

Darcy is silent for a long moment before she says, "You have a point. Should we go after him?"

"Let's give him a couple more hours," James says. "If the place hasn't blown up by then and he's still not answering, we'll go in."

Darcy nods, reaching out absently to pat DUM-E on the "head" when he pauses beside her and nudges at her arm. Stark's ridiculous bots have taken a shine to both her and James - she imagines it's got to do with James's repeated presence in the lab, breaking things and letting Stark poke at his arm, and probably her close connection with JARVIS. Either way, they're like friendly puppies whenever she or James is in the lab, and she often finds herself absently petting one or another of them.

DUM-E whirs at her, giving her a friendly chirp, before rolling off to harass the fabrication units at the far end of the workshop. Tony hoists himself up to sit on top of his workbench and he studies her. "So talk to me," he says. "What else is going on that I need to know about?"

Darcy exchanges a glance with James, then sighs softly. "When you were on the helicarrier, right before the alien invasion, you and Steve had a confrontation in the lab about Fury being a spy and whether or not he was keeping important secrets."

"And I was in the process of sending JARVIS digging through all of SHIELD's files, I remember." Tony nods.

"Well, remember how Steve went digging on his own, and came back with a weapon that SHIELD was making with the big magic cube thing, and you found the schematics for it online?" Tony nods, and she continues, "Did you happen to notice the logo on the side of the barrel?" She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the napkin that Steve sketched on.

Tony takes it, glancing at it, and reaches back into his memory. "...Not really," he admits. "That was right before everything went bad, with Loki's staff and Clint attacking and Bruce hulking out."

James nods. "That's what Steve said; he said it slipped his mind, too. But those weapons had HYDRA logos on them."

Tony blinks at them. "Really, now?" he says softly. "Now, why would those weapons have HYDRA logos if jolly old Saint Nicholas didn't know anything about HYDRA being inside SHIELD?"

"That's what we'd like to know," James says. "And I'm pretty sure that's what Steve's lookin' into."

Tony rubs at his chin for a moment, then says, "JARVIS, can we get a line into the good Captain's phone? See if we can see or hear anything."

"There is no visual input available through the camera," JARVIS reports. "I believe that the phone may be in Captain Rogers's pocket. There is audio available; however, it is quite muffled."

James makes an executive decision. "Play it anyway."

The sound of fabric muffling the microphone is loud, but under it, they can hear the sound of Steve's voice. He's talking to someone. _"Son, I don't know who you think you're talking to, but do you see this shield?"_

_"Yes, sir,"_ comes the voice of a young man, tremulous but trying to be firm. _"I know who you are, Captain Rogers. But you're not authorized - "_

_"I spent seventy years frozen in ice to defeat the Nazis, son,"_ Steve replies. _"I'm pretty sure I'm authorized for any damn thing I want."_

_"But sir, I can't let you take - "_

_"I'm not taking,"_ Steve says. _"I'm just borrowing. I'm going to bring it back before anybody notices it's even gone."_

_"But you can't - "_

_"Son,"_ Steve says again, and James snorts softly. _"Don't. Okay? Make it easy on yourself. Just look away. You don't see me. I'm not here."_

_"But - "_

_"Would it help if I knocked you out? Then you could tell anyone who asked that you were actually overpowered and you couldn't stop me. Because I promise you, if you keep blocking me, that's exactly what's going to end up happening. This is coming with me whether you like it or not; the only question is if you get all bruised up in the process."_

There is a long silence before Steve mutters, _"Good choice."_

"JARVIS," Tony says, "ring his phone the second he's clear from the building."

"Yes, sir," JARVIS replies.

They wait. Steve doesn't speak to anyone else except for the occasional friendly greeting; he doesn't sound like he's in a hurry or anything, and Darcy lets out a slow breath. "That's it, Steve," she whispers. "Walk out. Don't run. Don't let anyone know that there might be a reason to detain you. Just be cool and get out of there safely."

After an agonizing few minutes, they hear the sound quality change; Steve has entered the elevator. James chews his lip. The automated voice of the elevator acknowledges Steve's order for the parking garage.

A moment later, there's a soft  _ding_ and someone else gets on the elevator. _"Records,"_ says a man's voice, and the elevator acknowledges that order. And then the man's voice says, _"Captain."_

_"Rumlow,"_ Steve replies.

Darcy stiffens. "He's on the list," she says. "Rumlow, first name Brock. Leader of STRIKE team Epsilon."

They listen, both Darcy and James tense and Tony practically vibrating, as the two men make small talk about Rumlow's presence in New York. _"Yeah, the higher ups have us hunting down an asset,"_ Rumlow confesses. _"Seems to have gone off the grid here in New York; they want me to bring it back in."_

_"Oh?"_ Steve asks. _"Need any help?"_

_"Nah,"_ Rumlow replies easily. _"I'm pretty sure we've got it under control. Just a matter of getting our hands on it. Well, them."_

_"Them?"_ Steve inquires.

_"Yeah."_ Rumlow gives a soft laugh. _"It's a pair. Like shoes."_

_"A pair of assets?"_ Steve asks. _"That sounds interesting."_

_"Be more interesting if they were Norwegian twins,"_ Rumlow shoots back, and Steve gives the soft, flat chuckle that he uses when he's not actually amused even a little bit. The elevator gives a  _ding_ and Rumlow says, _"Be seeing you, Cap."_

_"Have a good one,"_ Steve replies. There is silence for a long moment. Then there is another  _ding_ and the sound quality changes again. The echoing quality this time indicates concrete; he is finally in the parking garage.

James breathes a soft sigh of relief. "Come on, Stevie," he growls. "Get outta there."

Steve, thankfully, obeys; they listen to his footsteps as he crosses the concrete and then the sounds of him mounting his bike. The engine roars, and after a few minutes JARVIS says, "He has left the building, sir. I am attempting to connect to his StarkPhone now."

They listen to the ringing: one, then two, then three, and then they hear Steve's voice say _"Rogers."_

"The  _fuck_ , Rogers?" James snarls.

_"I've got intel,"_ Steve replies.

"You damn near got your ass busted," James nearly shouts. "Rumlow that you just chatted up in the elevator's fucking HYDRA."

The silence after that pronouncement is thick. They can hear the sound of the wind blowing as Steve rides his bike through the Manhattan traffic. Finally he says, _"Are you sure about that?"_

"Absolutely certain," Darcy states flatly. "He reports directly to Pierce."

Steve swears. Then he swears again. _"I bet I know what asset he's looking for."_

"Yeah, so do we," James says flatly. "It doesn't take a genius."

"Just get back to the Tower," Tony says. "In one piece, please. We'll deal with everything else once you get here."

_"Yeah, I'm on my way,"_ Steve replies. The line disconnects.

"JARVIS, keep a monitor on him until he's back in the building," James says. "If they're actively looking for us, and openly enough to say so to him, they might know we're with him. If they suspect that I've got any of my memories back and I know who I am, they might be willing to try and grab him to use as leverage to get us."

Darcy snarls softly.

"They won't try that trick more than once," Tony assures them.

"Still," James says.

"I am monitoring Captain Rogers's position and status," JARVIS assures them. "If anything untoward occurs, I will sound the alarm immediately."

"Thank you, JARVIS," Darcy says.

Fortunately the alarm is not needed; Steve is back in the Tower within the hour, unharmed, and he's come bearing gifts: an actual bag full of physical files that he's liberated from the SHIELD archives. He brings them to the secure conference room that the Avengers use for all their team meetings and lays them out on the table, one by one, in front of the gathered team members. "This stuff is old," he tells them. "It's really old."

"It's  _very_ old," Tony says, picking up one of the files. "This isn't even SHIELD stuff." He flips it open. "Holy shit."

"What?" Clint asks, glancing over at it.

"This is my father's handwriting."

Darcy and Natasha both lean forward, curious. At the top of the page, there is a header that reads  _STRATEGIC SCIENTIFIC RESERVE._ "The SSR was the precursor to SHIELD," Natasha says.

"Yes," Steve says. "The SSR was the initiative that ran Project Rebirth, which is what turned me into, well..." His hand waved expressively. "Me."

"Don't think I've forgotten that I still owe you a beating for that," James says casually.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Steve replies, grinning. Then his grin fades. "Anyway, the point is that these files all deal with the SSR's interactions with HYDRA remnants. I'm kind of hoping that they can give us some direction, maybe a place to start looking or poking to find what we're looking for."

"And if they don't?" Bruce asks, picking up a file and flipping it open.

Steve shrugs. "Then I'll go back in and get some more. It's not like there's a shortage of stuff; there's a huge storage room in the New York facility that's got nothing but boxes upon boxes of SSR files."

"Any chance you brought out the ones on Project Rebirth?" Tony inquires, flipping through the pages of the folder he's holding.

"I thought you had all those," Steve says. "Figured Howard would've hung onto them."

"Well, he ran SHIELD until the day he died," Tony replies. "So he  _did_ hang onto them - but he did it with all the rest of the SHIELD and SSR files that he had his hands in."

"Hmm." Steve considers. "I wonder how noticeable we'd be if we pulled up in front of HQ with a big moving van."

Darcy laughs. "Nobody'd notice a thing, I'm sure."

"Well, it's possible that I could make a legal claim to those files, or that Stark Industries could. But we'd have to admit how we knew they were there in the first place."

"I've got clearance to be in the file room," Steve says easily, flipping through his file.

"That's why you had so much trouble getting out," James scoffs. "That's right, we were listening."

"I had so much trouble getting out," Steve asserts, "because I was bringing things with me. I have clearance to be in there, not to take things out."

"That does make a difference," Clint comments mildly. Then he says, "The fuck is Operation Paperclip?"


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting into some familiar territory at this point. All I'm gonna say is, you asked for it, guys....

CHAPTER FIVE

"Operation Paperclip was a joint program between the SSR and the Office of Strategic Services," Tony explains. "Starting in '45, just after D-Day, the U.S. Started recruiting scientists and engineers from all over Europe, including Germany."

"Nazi scientists?" Darcy inquires.

"Not just Nazis, but yes, a lot of Nazis," Tony admits. "Dad wasn't a huge fan of having the Nazis along for the ride – and Peggy Carter was totally opposed to it, but by the time she had a high enough security clearance to be read in, it was already going on. Not that it really mattered what either of them thought; the OSS would've done it by themselves even if the SSR hadn't been involved."

"Why?" Steve asks, sounding a little bit lost. "Why the hell... we'd just spent years fighting against them. _Why?_ "

Tony shrugs slightly. "You have to understand that even at the end of the war, the political climate was changing," he explains. "Russia had undergone a Communist revolution and the communists and socialists were gaining political ground in Europe and the U.S., and the Powers That Be were suddenly starting to get worried that the capitalist system might end up getting dismantled and they might not be disgustingly rich any more."

Clint snorts softly, and Tony nods. "I'm aware of the irony," he says simply. He continues, "So the U.S. started collecting all the bright scientific minds it could get. Partly to keep the Russians from getting them, and partly to keep Germany from trying to rebuild itself scientifically and militarily."

Natasha nods. "It was a classic Cold War maneuver," she adds. "Snatch up all the available resources in order to deny them to your opponent, regardless of the cost."

Bruce cocks his head, looking curious. "Why is it that you know about this sort of thing, but they don't?" he asks Natasha. He glances at James and Darcy. "Were you not in Russia during this time, or...?"

"The political situation was usually not part of our briefings," Darcy says. "Aside from things like  _you can't go into West Berlin because you'll be shot,_ I mean."

Natasha nods. "That sort of operative doesn't need to know what the political situation is," she explains. "Whereas I was neck deep in politics and espionage. But an operative like the Winter Soldier or the Snow Maiden is not used for such maneuvering. I was a hidden dagger, swift and silent in the night. They were guns - specifically, I think, long-range rifles."

"That's pretty accurate," James agrees. "I told Lukin once that Darcy wasn't suited for the kind of work you did. He asked me what I meant, and I used a hammer and a screwdriver, but your comparison is much more..."

"Apt," Darcy finishes for him.

"Yeah," he says. "That."

"Okay," Clint says. "So the idiots in Washington decided to recruit a bunch of mostly-Nazis after the war. That sounds like a fantastic idea."

"Well," Tony says, "in their defense, it did give us rocket scientists like Wernher von Braun, who developed the Saturn V rocket. That's the rocket that sent the Apollo spacecraft to the moon," he adds for Steve's benefit.

"Oh, I remember that," Darcy says suddenly. She looks over at Natasha. "Do you? We were girls in Leningrad then."

"I remember," Natasha says, smiling slightly. "I remember that they allowed us to watch one of the televised Soyuz launches, and Director Lukin gave a great speech about the future of Mother Russia."

"And Yelena was angry that they didn't send Tereshkova back up."

Natasha laughs at that, free and clear like the girl she never was. "Yes, she was!" she says, smiling broadly. "I'd forgotten about that. She ranted about that for  _days._ "

"And then there were Nazi scientists in the U.S.," Clint says, dragging the conversation back on topic.

"Right, sorry," Darcy says, still grinning. "Nazi scientists. Yes. Why were we talking about them, again?"

"Because I've got this file here that talks about some project one of them was working on. Guy named Zola, at a place called Camp Lehigh, in New Jersey."

James startles hard. "Zola?" he asks, in unison with Steve, who has nearly come to his feet. "The fuck were they doing recruiting  _Zola?_ " he demands.

Tony offers his empty hands. "I wasn't even born yet, Barnes," he says. "I'd happily let you pound it outta my dad if he was here, but he's a little bit dead, so you're out of luck."

Steve visibly forces himself to stand down, slumping backward in his chair. Tony reaches for the file. "Let me see what you have there, Barton."

Clint pushes the file toward Tony, then glances nervously toward Steve, as if unsure how to handle things. His eyes cut over toward Darcy, who jerks her head at him and gives him a significant look. Clint carefully shifts his chair toward Steve, just a little bit, and reaches out one hand. Steve grabs it and holds on, not tightly, but firmly - and Clint's face looks like a sunrise.

James snorts softly, and Darcy elbows him. "Be nice," she says in an undertone. "You used to look at me like that, you know."

"I still do," James admits, leaning in to nuzzle at her ear.

"Not nearly enough," Darcy replies, her tone a little arch, "but we can talk about that later."

She turns her attention to Tony, because Tony is starting to look deeply horrified by what he's reading. "Jesus fucked up Christ," he finally says. "I knew they were all crazy, but this?"

"What is it?" Bruce asks.

Tony lays the folder down flat and says, "In the seventies, apparently Zola got some kind of terminal diagnosis. Could've been cancer, but I suspect from the some of the symptoms they talk about in here that it might have been AIDS. Anyway, apparently they decided he was too valuable to just let him die or something, so they built a bunker underneath the SSR offices - which were still at Camp Lehigh at the time - and they transferred his consciousness into a computer."

James blinks. "They could do that in the seventies?"

Darcy stares. "They can do that  _now?_ " 

"They shouldn't be able to do it at all," Bruce declares. "Tony, are you sure about this?"

"I'm not sure of anything, to be honest," Tony says. "But I think it's worth checking out, don't you?" He looks up at the assembled Avengers. "If this guy is, for lack of a better term, alive down there, we need to know about it."

"Yeah, we do," James says suddenly, and there's something in his tone that makes everyone turn to look at him. Darcy reaches out to put a hand on his arm; he is white-faced and trembling with suppressed rage. "Because if that fucker is still alive, I got a conversation I need to be having with him."

"Buck?" Steve asks tentatively.

James's eyes go to Steve's face. "Zola's the one that did this to me," he says simply, and he gestures with his metal arm.

The room goes deathly silent. Steve swallows hard. "Okay," he says softly. "Yeah. I think you're owed a swing or two."

"It won't do any good, if he's been uploaded into a computer bank," Tony points out logically.

"No, but there's other ways we can make him scream," Darcy says flatly, and her words fall like lead weights onto the table.

There is another long moment of silence before Clint says, "I'm going to suggest we adjourn for now and pick this up again when everyone's had a chance to take a deep, cleansing breath."

"That sounds like a good idea," Bruce agrees softly. James shoves away from the table and stomps out of the room.

Steve looks like he wants to follow his friend, but Darcy shakes her head at him. "Let him go," she says. "He needs to work the rage out before he can be coherent about anything."

Natasha's phone beeps, and she pulls it out and raises an eyebrow at it. "Well," she says. "This is interesting."

"What's that?" Tony asks.

"I'm being called to D.C.," Natasha says. "Top secret mission. Fury wants me there by tonight." She glances around the table at them all. "I would just like to point out to everyone, before I go anywhere, that I do not believe in coincidences."

Darcy snorts.

~*~

Natasha's mission is a short one, and she works it with Rumlow and STRIKE team Epsilon. She sends Darcy a text saying that it's not the most uncomfortable she's ever been on a mission, but it comes close. Darcy shares the text with the team, and there are understanding noises all around.

The mission goes well enough, and she checks in again once she's safely back in D.C. And then all hell breaks loose.

Nick Fury is attacked and nearly killed in the street; he meets up with Natasha at a SHIELD safe house in the middle of the night and passes her the USB drive that she brought off the  _Lemurian Star._ She flees the city with it, making it back to New York almost at the same time as the news that Fury is dead. That news is brought by Maria Hill, who turns up at Avengers Tower asking for help.

"The thing is," she explains, standing in front of them in their conference room and utterly failing to be quailed by their severe expressions, "I think this is all related to Project Insight."

"And what, exactly, is Project Insight?" Tony asks.

"You should know, Stark, you worked on it," Hill replies. To the rest of the room, she explains, "We've built three next-generation helicarriers under the Triskelion. They're supposed to launch in a few days. They were meant to serve a mostly deterrent purpose. They sync to a network of targeting satellites - launched from the  _Lemurian Star_ \- and they never have to land. They're supposed to maintain continuous suborbital flight, thanks to the repulsor engines Stark designed."

James leans forward, resting his elbows on the table. "If they sync to targeting satellites, then they're aiming at something. What are they aiming, and who are they aiming at?"

"Long-range precision guns capable of eliminating a thousand hostiles a minute," Hill replies. "The satellites are capable of reading terrorists' DNA from inside their hiding places. They're  _meant_ ," she finishes, stressing the verb, "to neutralize threats before they happen."

"Really?" Steve says, his tone flat and unimpressed. "I thought the punishment was supposed to come  _after_ the crime."

Hill rubs at her temples. "After New York, Fury went to the World Security Council and convinced them that we needed a quantum surge in threat analysis," she explains. "Insight was the result. We were meant to be way ahead of the curve on the antiterrorism front."

"By holding a gun to the head of everyone on the planet and calling it protection?" Steve asks, his eyes going wide. "Are you kidding me?"

"Hey, Captain," Hill replies, bristling, "don't act like your hands aren't bloody. I've read some of the classified files about what the Commandos got up to during the War. And the rest of you, none of you have clean hands either."

"At least we admit it," Darcy snaps back. "At least we don't pretend that what we did was anything other than what it was."

"We had to compromise, back then," Steve says. "I'll admit that. And sometimes we did it in ways that made us not sleep so well at night. But we did what we did so that everyone could be free. This Insight you're describing? That's not freedom. That's fear."

"I feel like we're getting maybe a little off track here," Bruce interrupts, his voice calm and quiet as always. The only sign that he might be getting a bit agitated is the way he pulls his glasses off and polishes them on his shirt tail with quick, angry movements. "I imagine this Project Insight is classified at a very high level, Agent Hill, so I have to ask myself why you're standing here telling us about it."

Hill sighs softly. "Because Nick Fury is dead," she says, "and I don't know who else I can trust. Alexander Pierce, who is the North American representative to the World Security Council, is making a power grab inside of SHIELD and I think he's going to win, and..." She pauses, swallowing hard, and then she nods in Steve's direction. "And I have a bad feeling about those helicarriers."

On the other side of the table, Natasha pulls the USB stick out of her pocket and flips it in her hand a few times. Then she taps the end of it quietly on the table. "So I have this," she says. "It came from the  _Lemurian Star._ Fury passed it back to me right after he got shot the first time."

"That's something that might come in handy," Tony says. "Shall we see what's on it?"

"I'm going to suggest that it go onto a secure machine," Hill says. "Whoever killed Fury is going to want that."

"Let's all go down to the lab, shall we?" Tony suggests.

They're all in the process of standing when JARVIS gives the soft  _ping_ that is his version of a polite throat-clearing. "Sir," the AI says, "I have a call for you from Colonel Rhodes. He has indicated that the matter is urgent."

"Put him through, J," Tony directs.

"Tony," comes Rhodey's voice, "where are you?"

"In the Tower, why?"

"Because I just got a call from a buddy of mine in D.C. who says all hell's about to break loose down there and it sounded like your kind of thing," Rhodey explains. He goes on to say that his friend, a former Air Force pararescue specialist called Sam Wilson, was alarmed by reports on the news that the director of SHIELD had been murdered and his second in command was a wanted fugitive. "He knows I know you," Rhodey finished. "And he said if there's something going on that he can help with, he wants in."

They look around the room at one another for a moment, and nobody has any objections, so Tony nods. "Send me his contact details and tell him to sit tight," Tony says. "We'll be in touch. Probably in just a few hours."

The line disconnects, and they troop down to Tony's lab. "That drive contains a level six homing program," Natasha says as she hands it over to Tony. "So as soon as it starts up, SHIELD will know we have it and where we're accessing it from."

"JARVIS," Tony says.

"I will do my best to contain it, sir," the AI replies.

Tony pops the drive into a port and begins to type. "Huh," he says after a moment. "It's protected by some kind of AI. Keeps rewriting itself."

"Can you beat it?" Darcy asks.

Tony shrugs. "Maybe. Might not need to; I'm tracking its pingbacks to find out where it came from. It might be easier to read it at the destination." He waves a hand. "Everyone hush while I'm being a genius."

Darcy bites her lip against the obvious joke, grinning up at James, who is visibly biting down on his tongue - it's probably the same joke, even. He grins back at her. For just a moment, everything in her world is right again. And then Tony says, "Got it. And how's this for coincidence: it's coming from Wheaton, New Jersey. Surprise, surprise: that is the location of a certain Army camp that we've all so recently been discussing."

"Yeah, color me shocked," Clint drawls.

"Wheels up in ten," Tony says. "Hill, you're staying here."

"What?" she demands. "I came to you for help, and - "

"And you're getting it," Steve interrupts. "But you're also a liability right now, what with your face all over the news as SHIELD's Public Enemy Number One. Tony's right. Stay here and work the back end." He narrows his eyes at her. "You used to be a handler, didn't you? Rose up out of the ranks?"

Hill nods once, the movement jerky. Steve nods back, ignoring her anger. "Then do that," he says. "Get on the comms, work with JARVIS, and keep us updated about the situation as it develops." He turns to the team. "Let's get moving."

~*~

Darcy's new uniform is absolutely everything she could have hoped for a uniform to be. It's lightweight and cool, lined with a sweat-wicking material, and most importantly, bulletproof. It fits her like a second skin and it has Bucky's red star right in the center of the chest, and if she hadn't seen the words  _Mr. Stark, I'd like to discuss these numbers with you_ on Tony's shoulder, she might worry about how well he made it fit. But she knows that he's utterly dedicated to Pepper (who, incidentally, has the words  _Well, please step into my office and let's discuss that at length_ at the nape of her neck). She also knows that JARVIS is the one who took her measurements.

She has just finished the buckles that run up her sternum and is wrapping the utility belt around her hips when James steps out of the bathroom, his own vest hanging on his shoulders but not yet buckled. He looks her up and down. "Fits you good," he says, with only the barest trace of carnal appreciation.

She nods. "Should get Stark to make one for you," she says. "Feels like a second skin."

"Bulletproof?"

"Same material he makes Steve's out of," she confirms. She buckles the belt and walks over to him, checking his own. The leather was starting to crack the last time she looked at it, but she sees now that he has a new one. She tiptoes and presses her lips to his.

His hands slide up into her hair, cradling her head, and he deepens the kiss from a quick peck to something stronger, harder, more definite and infinitely more intimate. By the time he releases her lips, she's panting, and her hands are clenching at his biceps. "James, what the hell," she manages.

"Know you've been havin' a hard time lately," he tells her, turning her around by the shoulders and burying his fingers in her hair, starting up a quick, tight French braid. "Just... don't forget that I love you, okay?"

She swallows hard, closing her eyes against the sudden sting of tears. "I love you, too," she whispers. "So much that sometimes I can't breathe."

His fingers pause in her hair and he leans down, pressing another gentle kiss to the side of her neck. "Maybe when this is over we oughta go on a vacation."

She feels her eyes widen. "A vacation?"

"Yeah," he says, and suddenly his voice takes on that timbre that tells her that he thinks he's just had a really bright idea. "Maybe someplace with a beach. Give you some time in a bikini and me some time lookin' at you in a bikini."

She laughs. "What the hell would I do in a bikini, Chefchen?"

"Lay around and let me look at you?" he offers. He grabs a hair tie off the dresser and binds up the end of her braid.

She turns to face him, and he looks so hopeful that she can't help it. "Fine," she says, rolling her eyes. "We'll go on a vacation when this is over, if you want."

He leans down and kisses her hard again. "You'll see,  кукла," he says. "It'll be fun."

"Yeah, yeah." She tugs at the front of his vest. "Finish up; we're due on the roof in like two minutes."

"Yeah, like they're goin' anywhere without us."

~*~

The Quinjet lands in a wide, graveled space in the center of the now-deserted base. Tony's in-suit GPS leads them to a spot in front of the old barracks, and then they stop. His tone is disgusted when he speaks. "Dammit," he says. "The coordinates lead right here, but there's nothing. No signals, not even radio waves. It must've been rerouted to hide the original s- Cap?"

Everyone turns to look; Steve has gotten a funny expression on his face. "What is it, Cap?" Clint asks.

Steve says, "This camp is where I went to basic training."

"I  _ still _ owe you a beating for that," James comments.

Steve waves him off. "That building is new," he says, pointing to a munitions shed. "Well, new _er._ And Army regs prohibit storing munitions within five hundred yards of a barracks. That building's in the wrong place."

The lock comes off with a quick whack from Steve's shield, and they cover the entrance carefully, but there's no one inside. The air is stale and old, and smells of dust and the passage of long years. Still, they're careful as they enter the building; Natasha goes first, because she is the lightest and the quickest of foot, and therefore the one most apt to survive any sudden traps or weak spots in the flooring. Steve, James, and Clint follow, James covering Steve's right flank and Clint his left. Tony follows behind.

Darcy and Bruce look at one another.

Bruce says, "I don't think it's a good idea for me to go in there. This place has  _ IT'S A TRAP _ written all over it."

"Oh, good," Darcy says, breathing out a sigh of relief. "I thought I was the only one." She syncs her implant to Bruce's comm, then pulls out one of her handguns and chambers a round. They both listen as the others move deeper into the building.

_ "Stairs here,"  _ Natasha says, followed by the sound of her light steps going down. A moment later, Steve follows, and then Clint and James. Tony goes last. There is a snap, and then the sound of electricity, and then Natasha says, _ "This is SHIELD." _

_ "Maybe where it started,"  _ Steve agrees.

Darcy connects to one of the cameras in Stark's suit; she relays to Bruce that the rest of the team is in a large, dusty, disused office space with a huge SHIELD logo on the wall. She continues to describe what she sees through the camera as they pass through a doorway into what was probably a records room and stop in front of three framed photographs that hang on a wall.

_ "Well, if it isn't dear old Dad,"  _ Stark says. _ "And Peggy Carter." _

_ "Who's - is that Phillips?"  _ James asks.

_ "Phillips?"  _ Clint wants to know.

_ "Colonel Chester Phillips was our commanding officer in the war,"  _ Steve explains.  _ "He must have stuck around with the SSR after it was over." _

_ "Sure he did,"  _ Tony confirms.  _ "Got himself promoted clear up to two stars before he retired, too." _

_ "Huh,"  _ James says. _ "Good for him, I guess." _

There is quiet for a moment, and then Steve speaks again.  _ "If you're already working in a secret office,"  _ he says, and then he pauses, and there is the sound of metal groaning before he finishes.  _ "Why do you need to hide the elevator?" _

_ "Good question, Cap,"  _ Clint says. _ "I vote we find out." _

Darcy watches through Stark's camera, narrating the scene to Bruce in an undertone, as Natasha uses her SHIELD phone to scan the elevator's keypad for its code. The doors slide open, and Darcy winces as they all step into the elevator. "And if this was  _ my _ little house of horrors, this is the part where I'd drop boiling oil in from the ceiling."

Bruce grunts in agreement, but the elevator goes down the shaft with no trouble, and they all step out into a huge, dark space. They walk through the darkness toward a bank of lights, and Darcy can see Steve silhouetted against the spots of color, leading the pack. About halfway into the room, the lights begin to come up. "Holy shit," she whispers. "It's some kind of... I don't know. There's a big bank of computers, and then from what I can see, just rows and rows of what looks like reel-to-reel tape machines. We're talking  _ billions _ of dollars in mid-seventies-era tech."

Just then, Natasha speaks.  _ "This can't be the data point. This technology is ancient." _

_ "Sure it can," _ Stark contradicts her.  _ "Look, right there on the desk."  _ He points, and through the camera, Darcy can see the very modern USB hub that's lying on the desk, surrounded by smudges in the dust that were created by someone's hands moving on the desk's surface.

Natasha holds up the drive and taps her finger against it a couple of times, then walks over and plugs it in.

The response is immediate: the computers start booting up, and lights throughout the rest of the cavernous space flicker on, exposing that the data bank down there is far more extensive than Darcy had originally thought. The massive reel-to-reel machines begin to spin, and then the sagging camera in the center of the main setup lifts, in a move that reminds Darcy strangely of DUM-E rebooting itself.

Green letters cross the black of the center screen, accompanied by a synthetic voice that says the words  _ "Initiate system?" _

Natasha walks over to the keyboard.  _ "Y-E-S," _ she spells. Then she glances over her shoulder at Stark.  _ "Shall we play a game?" _

Clint snorts out a soft laugh.


	6. Chapter 6

Through Stark's suit-cam, Darcy watches as the screen begins to flicker, the green dots on it forming static at first before finally resolving into the suggestion of a face - or at least its top half - wearing a pair of thick goggles. An accented voice begins to recite.  _ "Rogers, Steven Grant: born 1918. Stark, Anthony Edward: born 1970. Barton, Clinton Francis: born 1971. Romanov, Natalia Alianovna: born 1984."  _ There is a pause, and then the voice says,  _ "Barnes, James Buchanan: born 1917, reborn 1945. My greatest triumph!" _

_ "Zola," _ James says, and his voice is thick with something Darcy cannot identify.

An electronic chuckle issues from the machine.  _ "You remember me," _ it says.  _ "I am so very pleased." _

_ "So this is what you've been reduced to,"  _ Steve says.  _ "A computer recording with a nasty attitude. That's... you know, Buck, I didn't think it was possible for him to be even more pathetic than he was before, but I'm starting to think this might do it." _

James snorts softly, amused. Zola's reply is sharp.  _ "Pathetic, Captain? I am not the one who spent seventy years frozen in a glacier, am I? While the world was passing you by, I was making a giant leap forward! Look around you! I may seem diminished, but if anything, I am expanded!" _

_ "I'm thinking that's a less than accurate statement, there, Mr. Chips,"  _ Tony says.  _ "According to your specs, you're running, what, a couple hundred thousand feet of tape down here?" _

_ "Two hundred thousand, yes,"  _ Zola says, and his tone is proud.

"Tony," Bruce murmurs under his breath, "What are you doing?"

_ "Well, as I recall,"  _ Tony continues,  _ "The tapes 3M put out in '72 were, what, three hundred feet each? And held two hundred kilobytes of data?" _

_ "That is correct," _ Zola says.  _ "What is your point?" _

_ "Not much,"  _ Tony says.  _ "Only that your storage amounts to less than fifteen percent of one gigabyte. Impressive for 1972, sure, but man. It's kind of a shame, really. Considering that modern science estimates the capacity of a human brain at anywhere from a hundred terabytes to two and a half petabytes, well... all I can say is, I bet you were a lot more fun at parties  _ before _ they put you on tape." _

Darcy snorts. "That's helpful, Tony," she says, rolling her eyes at Bruce. "Piss him off before we get any information out of him."

"That's Tony," Bruce agrees.

But Zola seems unperturbed.  _ "You may make your jokes all you like," _ he says.  _ "You cannot stop the rise of HYDRA." _ He pauses, and then gives an electronic chuckle.  _ "I see that you are not surprised. Of course not. Surely my lovely creation has told you all about HYDRA, and its spread within the ranks of SHIELD. A beautiful parasite, now poised to control all of the world. Humanity has finally reached a tipping point, my friends. It is ready to sacrifice its freedom in order to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise. We won." _

_ "What's on the drive?" _ James demands.

Zola chuckles again.  _ "Project Insight requires... well... insight. So I wrote an algorithm." _

_ "What kind of algorithm?"  _ Clint asks.  _ "What does it do?" _

_ "The answer to your question is fascinating,"  _ Zola assures him.  _ "Unfortunately, you will be too dead to hear it." _

That's all Darcy needs to hear; she's on her feet in a moment, tearing into the building, but she's too late; even as she hears the sound of Steve's shield clanging uselessly off the walls in the bunker, she finds the upstairs elevator doors blocked by thick steel barricades. She bangs on them anyway, screaming James's name.

_ "We got a bogey," _ Natasha's voice says over the comm.  _ "Short range ballistic. Thirty seconds, tops." _

Bruce is there too, grabbing Darcy around the waist and pulling her away. "Darcy, come on!" he shouts. "Come on, we have to get to safety!"

"No!" she screams. "Let me go! I'm not going without him!  _ JAMES! _ "

_ "I am afraid I have been stalling," _ Zola says.  _ "And now, I am afraid, we are all out of time." _

The explosion happens somehow all around them. Darcy is still screaming for James; still struggling to escape Bruce's iron grip, and he's stronger than she expected him to be, even knowing that he's been dosed with the serum too; stronger and somehow bigger, and he's crouching over her even as the world explodes around them, and he's still shouting, but now it's more like bellowing, and Darcy realizes quite suddenly that it isn't Bruce that's curled over her: it's the Hulk.

And no sooner has the debris stopped falling around them but the Hulk, with a mighty roar, throws himself upright, clearing the wreckage off both of them. Darcy coughs, her lungs thick with concrete dust and her gut churning, but through the comm she can hear coughing as well, and the sound of people pushing rocks off themselves.

_ "Report!" _ she hears Steve say.  _ "I'm uninjured; Natasha's with me but she's knocked out." _

_ "I'm good,"  _ Tony says.  _ "And I've got Clint he's also uninjured but he's lost his comm." _

_ "He won't be able to hear too well, then,"  _ James says, and Darcy sinks backward, feeling a little faint with relief.  _ "I'm not hurt, by the way, but I'm trapped under this damn table." _

"I'm here," Darcy says finally. "Bruce hulked out and covered me. He's..." She craned her neck, trying to get a look at him. "He's working on digging his way down toward you."

_ "Are you all right, кукла?" _ James demands.

"I... I'm okay," Darcy says. Then she stops and adds, "Well. I've broken my fucking left leg, but other than that I'm fine."

_ "Stay still until we can get to you,"  _ Steve says.  _ "We'll take care of it once we're topside." _

_ "I don't suppose it's much to hope for that the plane's undamaged,"  _ Tony wonders.

Darcy laughs softly, leaning back against a pile of debris and wincing as her leg starts to really throb. "Don't know," she admits. "I was inside when the missile hit."

_ "The fuck were you doing inside?"  _ James demands.

"Trying to get to you," she answers. There is a long silence after that, one that isn't broken until the rest of them start working on digging themselves out.

It doesn't take too long for them to reach one another and then the Hulk, who has been steadily digging since the moment he raised up from his protective crouch over Darcy. Once they're out, James makes a beeline for Darcy. He picks her up without a word and carries her free from the wreckage, and they are followed by the others, Steve carrying the still-unconscious Natasha. Miraculously, the plane is still standing there undamaged. Halfway there, the Hulk changes back to Bruce, and Tony catches him before he plants himself face-down on the gravel.

When they're all aboard, Clint puts the plane in the air, pointing it back toward New York.

~*~

"So the question is," Clint says once they're all seated around the table in the conference room, "who at SHIELD has the capability of authorizing a domestic missile strike?"

"Pierce," Steve replies easily.

"Who just happens to be sitting in the most secure holding in the world," James points out.

"Well," Tony says, "he's not working alone. Zola's algorithm was on the  _ Lemurian Star. _ "

Natasha looks up. "So was Jasper Sitwell."

There is a long moment of silence before Steve says, "So the  _ real _ question is, how do some of the most recognizable - and possibly the most wanted - people in the country kidnap a SHIELD officer in broad daylight?"

"The answer is, you don't," comes a new voice from the doorway. They all turn and look; James Rhodes is standing there, and beside him is a second Black man whom none of them recognize. He strides forward and tosses a manila folder onto the table.

"What's this?" James asks, reaching for it.

"Call it a resume," the man says. "Sam Wilson, Air Force pararescue."

"Right, Rhodey's friend," Steve says, standing up and offering his hand.

Wilson shakes it firmly, and Steve goes around the table, introducing everyone. By the time he gets around to James and Darcy, Natasha is leaning between them, looking at the papers in Sam's folder. "Is this Bakhmala?" she asks. "Khalil Kandid mission - that was you." She looks down at the file and then back up again. "I heard they couldn't bring in the choppers because of the RPGs. What did you use, a stealth chute?"

Sam shakes his head. "No." He gestures to the file, and points when Bucky flips it open. "Those."

James give a low whistle. There is a moment where everyone stretches and cranes their necks to see what he's looking at. And then Steve looks up at Sam. "Are you sure about this?" he asks. "You're out now. You probably got out for a reason."

"Dude, the Avengers need my help," Sam replies, a slight smile gracing his face. "There's no better reason to get back in."

Tony looks up then. "I can make one of these, but it's going to take time that we don't have. Where can we get our hands on one?"

"The last one is at Fort Meade," Sam says. "Behind three guarded gates and a twelve inch steel wall."

Darcy snorts. "I thought it was going to be a challenge."

"Your challenge is to sit your ass here and stay here," James replies. "You don't move from this tower until your leg is healed. And I know how long that takes, so don't think you can snow me, either. Remember Belarus?"

Darcy rolls her eyes. "You were the whiniest  _ baby _ after Belarus." She sighs. "Fine," she says. "Take Hill instead of me."

"I'm not going with them," Hill replies. "I have something else I need to do."

There is a long, cold moment of silence before Darcy says, "On second thought, maybe you should leave her here with me. We can have a nice chat about whatever little side mission she thinks is so much more important."

Hill pauses, then sighs. "Fine," she says. "There's actually a contingency plan in place in the event of SHIELD being taken over by a hostile force. I'm going to be checking up on that."

There is a long moment of silence before Steve speaks. "All right," he says. "Natasha, Sam, you're with me, and we're going after Sitwell. Tony, Bucky, Clint, you're with Hill." He holds up a hand to forestall Hill as she opens her mouth to protest. "Before you say anything, this is how it's going to work. You came to us for help, and we're doing this our way. If you don't like it, you can go ask someone else for help. Maybe the X-Men. Or the Fantastic Four." He pauses, then smirks. "Oh, wait, you can't, can you? Because Nick Fury totally alienated both the X-Men and the Fantastic Four, and the whole reason he thought up the Avengers Initiative in the first place was because he needed a superhero group that was willing to be affiliated with SHIELD."

There is another long moment of silence before Tony says, "Damn, Steve, that was impressive."

"Thank you," Steve says, an expression of faux modesty on his face. Then he says, "All right, you all have your orders." He turns to Darcy. "I need you in the frequencies," he says. "Can you get into SHIELD's from here, or do you need to be closer to them?"

"I can tap their local systems from here," she says. "I should be able to piggyback onto their frequencies from there, because they'll have somebody listening from back at the base."

"Do that," he says. "Keep us updated."

"You got it, Cap." She closes her eyes, reaching for the nearest signal.

"And me?" Bruce asks quietly.

Steve takes a deep breath. "I'm going to give you the option," he says. "I'd like to have you with me, but I can  _ probably _ do this without you."

Bruce is quiet for a moment, long enough that Darcy opens her eyes to look. Bruce is studying Steve, who is looking back at him quietly. Finally, Bruce says, "I'm with you, Cap. If you think you might need me, I'd rather be there."

Steve nods. "Thank you," he says softly.

Bruce turns back to Darcy. "You need to go upstairs," he tells her. "I want you keeping that foot elevated for at least another day, do not argue with me. You can do everything you need to do from a couple of floors up."

Behind him, she sees James turn toward her, his fighting face on, and she gives up gracefully. "All right," she says. "I'll go sit in the common room."

"Good plan," Tony says. "I'll get Pepper to send up one of the interns to fix you a sandwich or something."

"Just get Jane," Darcy says. "She probably needs to come out of the lab anyway."

"All right. Up you get." James comes over, reaching for her.

She scowls at him. "I'm perfectly capable of - "

"You're either coming in my arms or over my shoulder; what's it going to be?" he cuts her off. "I don't have time to stand here and argue with you. You're not walking on it until it's healed; I don't care how much pain you can take."

Her scowl darkens, her eyes darting to the others in the room before returning to his, promising retribution. She allows him to lift her, wrapping her arm around his neck, and he maneuvers her carefully out the door and down the hall to the elevator. The others considerately let them have the elevator to themselves, and he shifts her in his arms, leaning her back against the wall and nuzzling her face with his. "Don't be sore at me, кукла," he murmurs, his breath hot and sweet against her neck. "I worry about you."

She sighs, raising her arms and draping them over his shoulders, her fingers hooking together behind his neck. "You're an asshole, James Barnes," she says. "And I can't stay mad at you."

"Lucky me," he replies, grinning, and she laughs, raising up to press her lips to his. The elevator chimes as they arrive at the common floor and Bucky lifts her easily, carrying her over to the sofa and depositing her neatly at the leftmost end, within reach of the television remote control and the side table. He goes into the attached kitchen and gets her a glass of juice and a bowl of the trail mix Bruce makes, and by the time he comes back, she has her foot propped up on the coffee table, resting on a throw pillow. He leans down to kiss her again. "Okay, I have to get going," he says.

She nods, then taps at the side of her head. "I'll be right there with you," she assures him.

He grins. "You better be; I couldn't do this without you."

"Love you, too, Chefchen," she murmurs, and he goes.

She closes her eyes and begins digging through the morass of wireless signals that is New York City, searching for the ones belonging to SHIELD. She can hear the rest of the team loading into the Quinjet and preparing to head for D.C.; just as she isolates the SHIELD frequency band, she hears the elevator door open behind her and Jane's distinctive footfalls. "Darcy?" Jane says, sounding a little frustrated. "Tony said I was needed up here. He shut my lab down, Darcy." She rounds the couch, clearly working up a good head of steam, and then she stops at the sight before her. "Oh, my God!" she gasps. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Darcy assures her. "Or, at least, I will be in a couple of days. I just had some debris land on it. It's a clean break. It doesn't even hurt much, honestly."

Jane fusses over her for a minute, making sure her leg is lying comfortably, and then says, "Well, what do you need me to do?"

"Mostly just keep me company, and maybe help me to the bathroom if I need it," Darcy replies, grinning. "I was a little surly about getting left behind, so the boys thought it might be best if I had someone to play with. They forgot I'm busy monitoring frequencies and making sure nobody sneaks up behind and gets the jump on them."

"Oh, sure," Jane says. "I can do that. In fact, it'll do me good to catch up on some reading in the field."

JARVIS chimes softly. "If I may, Dr. Foster, there is a StarkPad in the drawer of the end table to the right of the large sofa; I would be happy to download the newest issues of any journals you wish to read."

"JARVIS, you're a peach," Jane replies. She retrieves the StarkPad and names off her favorite astrophysics journals, then heads into the kitchen for a drink. By the time she returns, JARVIS has downloaded all the most recent issues, and Jane settles in on the other end of the couch with a happy noise.

Darcy focuses on her work, sliding easily into the frequency band and flipping through the signals, looking for the ones that will tell her what she needs to know. She shunts her awareness of the team into the back of her mind for now; they won't be in D.C. for at least forty-five minutes, so she doesn't need to monitor them unless there's some kind of emergency on the plane. She's free to dive headfirst into the signals that SHIELD is sending out. So that's exactly what she does. For the next thirty minutes, she searches frequency after frequency: radio, analog, cable, digital, even land line telephones, looking for the information she wants.

When she finds it, she takes a brief second to pat herself on the back, and then she reaches out for her connection to JARVIS and pulls him into gestalt with her. She shows him what she has and he, quicker than thought, divines her intention and connects to the signal, downloading and recording and saving every bit of it to his own secure servers. They can take time later to sift through it and learn what it all means; for now, all that matters is the hunt.

A change in the team's signal gets her attention; she turns her focus to it and finds that they have landed at the Stark Industries facility in Silver Spring, which Darcy privately thinks is a stroke of genius. With the plane on private property, nobody will be able to access it without the permission of either Tony or Pepper or their army of lawyers. She listens to them all leave the plane, and they split up. Steve, Natasha, Sam, and Bruce take one of the cars that Stark had waiting for them and head toward Fort Meade; everyone else piles into the other car. Maria Hill is driving that one, and Darcy is pleased to note that both cars are equipped with transponders that ping back their locations to Stark satellites. She will be able to track them even if all the comms in the car go offline; the only way she could possibly lose them is if they get hit with an EMP.

She opens her eyes wide at that thought and reaches out, tapping softly on the wooden side table with her knuckles even as she reaches for her juice. Jane raises her head. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, just..." Darcy pauses, huffing a laugh. "Knocking on wood. Had a bad thought."

Jane tilts her head slightly. "Do you still believe in superstitious stuff?" she asks.

Darcy shrugs. "I don't think I ever actually believed in it to begin with," she says. "So it's hard to say  _ still. _ Black cats, walking under a ladder, breaking a mirror? Nah. Evil eye? I don't know, maybe. I've seen things..." She pauses, biting her lip. Then she shakes her head. "I think it's down to what you believe, really. If you believe in the evil eye and then someone says they've hexed you with it? Especially if it's someone else that you know  _ also _ believes? I can understand the psychology behind it. And, you know, people actually die from that kind of thing. Even today."

Jane nods. "I just... I just wonder sometimes. With everything you've been through, you know? It wouldn't surprise me if you quit believing in anything at all."

Darcy shrugs. "I don't remember what I was raised to. I... I have some vague memories that I think might be church things, but I'm not really sure. I never went to church or had any kind of religious instruction from the Russians, that's for sure."

"You and James married in a church, though," Jane points out.

Darcy nods. "We did. But that was his idea. He wanted to be married 'proper'. I was perfectly content with what we had. That's not to say that it didn't mean a lot to me, him wanting to stand up and say the vows in front of witnesses. It meant..." She pauses, swallowing. "It meant everything to me. But if you're asking me whether or not I believe in God, I'd have to say no."

Jane nods. "I don't either, but for different reasons, I think." She grins. "Funny how that works out."

Darcy snickers. "I don't know, I might think differently if I'd been raised differently." She considers. "I feel like my parents probably went to church sometimes. But that could just be because I know that was the culturally expected sort of thing at the time, and so I'm projecting. I should ask Pamela; she'd know."

Jane nods. "How's that working out, the Pamela thing?"

"It's weird," Darcy admits, keeping an ear on Steve, who has just bluffed his way past a set of security guards and into the facility at Fort Meade where Sam's wings are being stored. "She remembers me, and she can tell me a lot about the family and about things I never really knew that I needed to know. And when I look at her, and I still see the girl from my memories, it's... it feels good. It feels good to be connected to someone from my past. It's kind of what I imagine James feels when he spends time with Steve. But at the same time, I look at her and I think, _ I'm supposed to be older than you. _ She's got four kids and a bunch of grandkids. I should have that, too. But I don't." She sighs. "I probably never will."

"Don't say never," Jane admonishes her. "You know, you can always adopt. Or you could get a surrogate or something. You still have your ovaries, right? Which means your eggs are still there. They might even still be viable."

Darcy laughs. "There's something worth considering. Hey, you might be able to pass on your genes to a living organism."

"You know what I mean." Jane turns to face her and says, "I'd carry for you."

Darcy blinks. "That... okay, I have to be honest, that is not actually something I expected to ever hear you say to me."

Jane smiles, acknowledging the point and the strangeness, but she continues. "I mean it, though," she says. "If you could - if you wanted to. It's a long shot, maybe, but I'd be willing to do it. And hey, if you wait until Thor gets back from Asgard, that might even make things better."

"Why?" Darcy drawls.

"Because in addition to being the god of thunder, he's also the god of fertility," Jane points out, grinning broadly. "So we could get him to sort of keep an eye on things, make sure everything's going as planned."

Darcy rolls her eyes so hard she thinks they might pop out (and that is an actual concern with the right one). "You know, Jane, you have three PhDs. You should really not be this much of a dork."

Jane laughs softly, turning her attention back to the StarkPad in her hands. "Anyway, keep it in mind. There are a lot of options you haven't even considered yet."

"Believe it or not, I've actually considered most of the options," Darcy replies. "And I'm pretty sure that any application James and I made to adopt a child would go straight into the circular file. Without even taking into account our bizarre histories and the fact that we're basically fugitives from HYDRA and from international justice, there's also the fact that we're Avengers, which makes us neither particularly stable nor particularly sane, and not at all the kind of people you want to entrust a child to unless you're just interested in seeing how many villain groups can fall all over themselves to kidnap it and hold it for ransom."

Jane gives a nod of her head. "All very good points," she admits. "Still, there are ways. Just... don't give up all hope yet, okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Darcy says, but she's distracted by the fact that Maria Hill just drove up to a disused hydroelectric dam and blew the horn in a particular pattern. "What the...?" she whispers to herself, zooming in on one of the Stark satellites. She watches like a television screen while the whole side of the dam slides open, revealing a parking area underneath, and she pulls inside, letting the secret entrance slide closed behind her.

Darcy tries to shift her focus to one of the body-cams that Stark wears on his person at almost all times, but there's something in the dam that prevents her from catching the signal; all she can get is the occasional bite of static and half a word or so here and there. The variety of voices tells her that everyone is at least alive, but it's making her very nervous all the same.

Steve, meanwhile, has handed off Sam's wingpack to Natasha, who is in the process of getting it out of the building to Sam. Listening to him distract the security guards with stories about  _ Back in my day _ is always amusing, and Darcy lets herself focus on him for a few minutes, her worry about the others sliding to the back of her mind for now.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lateness, guys! I blame finals-brain; I totally forgot.
> 
> In this chapter: two instances of nonspecific rape threats, clearly not going anywhere but threats all the same because the bad guys are stereotypical.
> 
> Also, savor the final scene. _Savor it._

She watches through Natasha's scope as Sam Wilson makes his move. He sits at a table outside a cafe and watches as Jasper Sitwell shares an embrace with a man she recognizes well: Stern, U.S. Senator, companion of Alexander Pierce and high ranking HYDRA operative.

Over the comm, she hears when Wilson delivers Sitwell's orders. And she nearly laughs out loud when Wilson explains just exactly why Sitwell is going to follow them.  _ "Because that tie looks really expensive, and I'd hate to mess it up." _ The expression on Sitwell's face when he looks down and finds that laser sight on the center of his chest is priceless; Darcy wishes she could take a picture of it.

To his credit, Sitwell does at least  _ try _ to pretend that he's innocent; it doesn't matter. Nobody believes him. Of course, he doesn't believe them, either, until Steve steps to the side ( _ "You're right. It's not my style. It's hers." _ ) and Natasha gives Sitwell a solid kick in the sternum; Sitwell goes over the edge, screaming. He's still screaming when Wilson drops him back on the roof.

_"Zola's algorithm is a program for choosing Insight's targets."_

_ "What targets?"  _ Steve demands.

_"You - all of you. A TV anchor in Cairo, the Undersecretary of Defense, a high school valedictorian in Iowa City. Tony Stark, Stephen Strange - anyone who's a threat to HYDRA. Now or in the future."_

_ "The future?"  _ Banner asks. _ "How could it know?" _

Sitwell laughs.  _ "How could it not?"  _ He stands.  _ "The twenty-first century is a digital book. Zola taught HYDRA how to read it."  _ He looks around at them.  _ "Your bank records. Medical histories, voting patterns, e-mails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores! Zola's algorithm evaluates people's past to predict their future." _

_ "What then?"  _ Steve demands.

_ "God, Pierce is gonna kill me,"  _ Sitwell mutters.

_ "Not if we get you first,"  _ Natasha assures him.  _ "Now talk." _

Sitwell stares at Steve for a long moment before speaking again.  _ "Then the Insight helicarriers scratch people off the list. A few million at a time." _

~*~

They're barreling up the freeway, heading for the Triskelion.  _ "The helicarriers are launching in sixteen hours,"  _ Natasha says.  _ "We're cutting it kind of close. _

_ "If Darcy can't get in, we'll have to brute force it," _ Steve says. 

"I'm working on it, I'm working on it," Darcy replies. She's digging deep into SHIELD's systems now, aided by some passcodes that she lifted from Maria Hill's personal electronics, but it's a maze in there. The system was designed deliberately to prevent people from doing exactly what she's trying to do, and it's Byzantine in its depth and complexity. And even if she can manage to get into the launch systems, there's no guarantee that she'll be able to stop it in time. If anything depends on physical button-pushes, they're screwed. And it doesn't help that she's desperately forwarding everything she can at the other team via Stark's connection to JARVIS, trying to coordinate them into come kind of coherent maneuvering.

_ "What do you mean, brute force?" _ she hears Sitwell demand.

_ "We'll use you to bypass the DNA scans and access the helicarriers directly,"  _ Steve explains.  _ "Congratulations, you're gonna be a patriot." _

_ "What? Are you crazy?!"  _ Sitwell exclaims.  _ "That is a terrible, terrible idea - " _

But he gets no farther; the sound of a crash echoes through the comm unit, followed by screeching tires and twisting metal. They've been hit. Darcy reaches for one of Stark's satellites, zooming in on the crash site. They've been rear-ended by a military-style troop transport vehicle, and Wilson is doing his best to keep control of his vehicle even as the transport pushes them through traffic and toward the side wall of an overpass.

She watches them lose control; watches Steve fall out the passenger door onto his shield, keeping Wilson on top of him to protect him; watches Natasha pull the same maneuver out the back door in tandem with him, using the door itself as her shield. She has a grip on Bruce's jacket; Bruce has Sitwell by the lapels. As soon as they stop skidding, they roll to their feet and start running. Darcy sees a man hanging out the window of the troop transport raise his rifle; she shouts a warning, but it's too late: Sitwell's brains are blown out and his body falls onto the concrete.

The others keep moving; Steve gets blown off the side of the freeway, but Bruce and Sam and Natasha take cover behind overturned or stopped cars. Stark and James are shouting in her ear for updates; and something about Fury that doesn't make sense because Fury is dead, and suddenly there is a roar in Darcy's ears that has absolutely nothing to do with anything except the giant green rage-monster that's turning HYDRA operatives into tomato paste on a Washington freeway.

Wilson makes his way from the place where he fell to his overturned car, retrieves the wing pack from the trunk, and straps it on. He starts toward the battle zone, but Natasha waves him off.  _ "Hulk has this,"  _ she shouts.  _ "Get down there and help Steve." _

Sam vaults over the edge of the overpass, his wings giving him a smooth glide down. He lands on top of the overturned bus that Steve got blown into, and begins helping the bus's passengers out through the windshield. Steve himself is just regaining consciousness at the back of the vehicle, and once he staggers to his feet, Sam directs him to where his lost shield lays in the middle of the street.

Sirens herald the impending arrival of police, and once everyone's out of the bus, Sam grabs Steve by the back of his jacket and hauls him back up onto the overpass where the Hulk, having dispatched of all the HYDRA operatives, is now cheerfully dismantling their vehicle. He turns to face Steve and Sam as they land.  _ "Smash HYDRA," _ he says simply.

_ "Yeah, big guy,"  _ Steve agrees.  _ "Good work." _

"Steve," Darcy says. "You guys need to get out of there. Those sirens - that's not D.C. Metro."

Fortunately, there are more than a few abandoned cars right there on the freeway; within just moments, Steve and Natasha and Sam are crammed into the cab of a pickup truck with Hulk lying down in the truck's bed, covered by a bright blue tarp. Darcy gives them directions to rendezvous with Stark and James and the others, and they actually drive past the incoming HYDRA agents on their way out.

Sam actually gives a whoop of excitement once they're past the obvious danger; Darcy, on the other hand, sags back into her seat with an explosive sigh. "I cannot handle this," she says out loud, not caring that the entire team can hear her. "I am not equipped to sit here and watch. I am supposed to be out there with you."

_ "You stay right the fuck where you're at, кукла,"  _ James orders.  _ "I swear by Lenin's ghost I will tie you down." _

_ "That was possibly the most Russian thing I've ever heard you say," _ Tony comments.

"All of you shut up," Darcy snaps. "I'm trying to listen to the frequencies and there's too many of them."

_ "Shunt some of them to JARVIS," _ Tony says.  _ "He can listen to more than you can." _

"I already did," she tells him. "Now please  _ stop talking. _ "

Thankfully, Tony obeys, and Darcy switches her focus to the SHIELD frequencies that the HYDRA agents are communicating on. She relays what she's hearing: the agents are interviewing witnesses at the scene; plenty of people saw and recognized the Hulk, but because he's an Avenger, they're assuming he was fighting bad guys; plenty of other people saw and recognized Captain America, and understood that he was fighting alongside the Hulk; a few people also recognized Natasha as the Black Widow, but nobody recognized Sam, and HYDRA has no idea who he was. The comments made about him are uncomplimentary enough that Darcy does not pass them on; she's fairly sure Sam is already quite aware of the things that a racist neo-Nazi organization would call him. She doesn't need to confirm it.

She does, however, take a moment to point out to everyone that once you've found yourself placed at the top of HYDRA's most-wanted list, it's a fair bet that you're doing something right with your life.

~*~

The team reconvenes just outside the city in Bethesda, and Maria leads them back to the dam. This time, Darcy stops Tony before he enters. "I can't access your signal in there," she says. "I'm blind and deaf. If your connection to JARVIS drops, I won't have any way of contacting you once you're inside."

Tony says,  _ "I'll find a way to get you in." _

"Thanks," she replies.

True to his word, Tony gets her a connection: he unapologetically calls her on his StarkPhone, piggy-backing the video feed off his body cam so that she has at least a partial view of what's going on and the ability to weigh in on what she sees and hears - as well as a secondary connection to the private comm she always shares with James, thanks to JARVIS's superior multitasking ability. What Tony Stark sees turns out to be a very much alive, if badly injured, Nick Fury, with a plan that will either save the world or get a bunch of people killed.

Where Fury got the targeting chips is anyone's guess, and it's certain he's not going to tell the Avengers, but he has them and he has a plan to use them.  _ "We need to breach those carriers," _ he says,  _ "and replace their targeting blades with our own." _

_ "One or two won't cut it,"  _ Maria adds.  _ "If even one of those ships remains operational, a whole lot of people are gonna die." _

Darcy would stare in shock if she was there; as it is, she just blurts out the first words that make any sense. "That's a suicide mission."

_ "It's not anywhere close to being a suicide mission,"  _ Fury replies, sounding exasperated.  _ "There's two fliers on the team; they can both fly into those helicarriers once they're in the air and replace those chips, and they can carry somebody with them for backup." _

_ "I got dibs on the cyborg,"  _ Sam Wilson says immediately. He smirks at Steve.  _ "I know you're Captain America and all, but you got a giant Frisbee. That guy's got guns." _

Steve laughs.  _ "Not a problem,"  _ he says.  _ "Stark and I have worked together before." _

_ "Not peacefully,"  _ Stark adds, sardonically amused,  _ "but successfully." _

Darcy realizes her hands are shaking, and she pushes them between her knees. "James," she says softly on their private frequency. "I swear..."

She hears him get up and move; watches in Stark's camera as he steps away from the table.  _ "Everything's going to be fine, кукла," _ he replies, his own voice low.  _ "As missions go, this is fairly low-impact." _

"Low-impact?" she nearly shrieks. "Are you insane? You're talking about flying  _ onto the Insight helicarriers. _ You have no idea - what if the control rooms are heavily guarded, James? What then? You're going in there with nothing but an unknown for backup!"

_ "I know you don't know me well," _ Sam Wilson's voice replies calmly,  _ "but I've got experience. And I swear to you, I will not drop your man in harm's way." _

Darcy is silent for a long moment. She hadn't even realized that she'd lost control of the frequencies and was broadcasting not over her and James's private line, but to all of the assembled Avengers through Stark's phone. She blows out a soft breath. "Okay, that's embarrassing."

There is a soft ripple of combined laughter.  _ "If that's the most embarrassing thing any of us ever does on comms," _ Barton says,  _ "I'd say we're doing really damn well." _

_ "We have to assume everyone aboard those helicarriers is HYDRA," _ Fury says, taking back control of the conversation.  _ "We have to get past them - which shouldn't actually be too hard, given the carriers' architecture - and insert these server blades and maybe, just maybe, we can salvage - " _

_ "We're not salvaging anything," _ Steve snaps.  _ "We're not just taking down the carriers, Nick, we're taking down SHIELD." _

_"SHIELD had nothing to do with - "_

_ "You gave us this mission," _ Steve interrupts.  _ "This is how it ends. SHIELD's been compromised; you said so yourself. HYDRA grew right under your nose and nobody noticed." _

_ "Why do you think we're meeting in this cave?" _ Fury demands.  _ "I noticed!" _

_ "How many paid the price before you did?" _ James asks softly.  _ "How many people died and suffered while you were playin' spy games and tryin' to salvage something that can't be saved?" _

_ "SHIELD, HYDRA, it's two sides of the same coin," _ Steve finishes.  _ "It all goes." _

There is a long moment of silence before Maria Hill speaks.  _ "He's right,"  _ she says simply.

Fury looks around the table, his eyes moving from person to person slowly. No one speaks, but they all manage to indicate through subtle movements and body shifts that they agree with Steve. Fury blows out a long, slow breath.  _ "Well," _ he says,  _ "looks like you're giving the orders now, Captain." _

~*~

Barton and Banner collect the Quinjet for backup, and they stand at the ready just across the Potomac in Arlington. From the moment someone shouts for them, they can be above the Triskelion in under three minutes. Maria Hill goes with Steve, Tony, James, and Sam to the Triskelion itself, and they make their way up to the control room with very little resistance. It seems that HYDRA has not quite stepped out of the darkness just yet, and so there's confusion in the ranks about whether Maria Hill is a fugitive from SHIELD or its new commander. With Captain America at her side, nobody questions her.

Steve waits until Darcy signals that Natasha is in place before making his speech. When he finishes, Sam smirks up at him.  _ "You practice that, or did you just make it up on the spot?" _

_ "He practices 'em in the bathroom mirror, late at night when he thinks everybody else is asleep," _ James says in a confidential tone.

_ "Nice," _ Sam says, nodding.

_ "Screw both of you," _ Steve retorts amiably.

_ "Doesn't practice his comebacks much, does he?"  _ Sam says to James.

_ "I'm thinking about sending him to Toastmasters for those," _ Tony quips.

_ "Enough," _ Maria says, slipping into her seat at the computer.  _ "Go take down some helicarriers." _

"Chefchen," Darcy murmurs into James's private comm.

_ "I know, кукла," _ he murmurs back.  _ "Believe me, I know." _

She swallows hard, letting loose a soft, shaky breath, and then she gives Jane a weak smile of gratitude when the scientist refills her juice. She closes her eyes again and watches through security cameras as Natasha takes over the room and begins managing the upload of SHIELD's secret files; she winces as Pierce recites a litany of things that mean nothing to her but that make Natasha flinch a little bit, but she has to restrain a cheer when, despite all of that, Natasha does not so much as pause in her actions.

_ "Are you ready for the world to see you as you really are?" _ Alexander Pierce asks.

Natasha looks back at him impassively for a long moment and replies,  _ "Are you?" _

Through Stark's body cam, she watches him fly directly up to the Alpha carrier as it rises out of the construction bay, shoot the glass out with a repulsor, and carry Steve right over any possible resistance to the control circuitry. Steve swaps out the tracking cards without any trouble and breaks the old one in half, tossing it aside before Tony snags him by the shield harness and carries him right back out again.

Through a variety of security cameras on the side of the Alpha and Bravo carriers, she watches Sam and James pull off a similar maneuver; James, who is secured to Sam's body with a pararescue harness, uses his sidearm to blow out one of that carrier's glass panels, and they are in and done in nearly the same amount of time that Tony and Steve took with Alpha. James uses his metal hand to crush the Bravo targeting chip before Sam swoops him back out again. They duck between the carriers and the Triskelion, taking up a position with a visual on the helicopter that Fury just arrived in.

Tony and Steve duck into the Charlie carrier, expecting to be in and out just as they were on Alpha. It doesn't go quite as smoothly this time. STRIKE team Epsilon is waiting for them: five men ranged around the control circuitry, heavily armed and ready to fight.

Tony drops Steve on the catwalk facing Brock Rumlow, and Rumlow gives Steve a sarcastic little salute.  _ "How you doin' there, Cap?" _ Rumlow asks.

Steve smirks.  _ "Can't complain, Brock, how about you?" _

_ "Not bad, not bad," _ Rumlow replies. His tone is easy, conversational.  _ "So, listen, you remember the other day when I was in New York, and I was looking for those missing assets?" _

Steve nods, leaning casually against the catwalk railing while Tony hovers nearby.  _ "I remember," _ he says.

_ "Yeah, so, I just want you to know, Cap, and this is nothing personal, okay? But once you're dead, they're going to be retrieved. They're not needed any more, what with Insight being so much more efficient, but HYDRA doesn't give up things that belong to it." _ He smirks slightly.  _ "Have you ever seen what happens when somebody gets their brain wiped, Cap? There's a lot of screaming involved." _

_ "So I've heard," _ Steve replies, working hard to keep his voice even.  _ "I hope you understand that it isn't going to happen." _

_ "Sure it is," _ Rumlow assures him.  _ "See, Cap, what you don't know is that we know exactly where those assets are. We know one of them's here with you, but the other one's back in New York. Looks like a broken leg. Be tough for her to defend herself, and we all know he'll come after her. She's the perfect bait." _

Darcy freezes. "JARVIS," she snaps. "Who's on the residential floors besides me and Jane?"

"Two members of the cleaning crew," JARVIS replies. "They are on the floor below you, resetting one of the guest suites."

"Lock them down," Darcy says. "They don't leave that suite until I say so. Where's Pepper?"

"Done," JARVIS acknowledges. "Miss Potts is in her office."

"Lock down all the residential floors, zero access, my authorization only, and lock Pepper down, too. Let her know what's going on."

"Done," JARVIS repeats. He pauses, and then he adds, "I believe that one of the cleaning crew members downstairs is a possible HYDRA infiltrator. He has rendered his co-worker unconscious and is attempting to escape via brute force."

On the comm, Darcy hears Rumlow make a very explicit statement about the various uses HYDRA intends to put her to once they have her back under their control. She rolls her eyes. How unimaginative.

Darcy says, "Cap, no worries; I'm good here. The residence is secure, Pepper's safe down in her office, and I've got a HYDRA mole on the next floor down locked in a suite. Jane's about to go lock herself up in Tony's panic room."

"The hell I am," Jane replies. "I'm staying right here with you."

"No, you're not," Darcy says calmly. "You're going upstairs and lock yourself in the panic room, because I have a fucking broken leg and I have the place on lock but I can't protect you if somebody decides to come in through the fucking window."

"You can't protect  _ yourself, _ much less anyone else!" Jane argues.

Darcy laughs. "Jane, let me assure you that if it came down to it, I can protect myself well enough. Nobody's taking me out of this building alive. But I can't focus on keeping myself safe if I also have to worry about you so  _ please. Go upstairs. _ "

Jane's lip wobbles for a moment before she grabs her StarkPad. "Fine," she says mulishly. "But you have to loop me in on all the feeds."

"JARVIS," Darcy says. "Do it. Audio and video in only; I don't need more voices on the comms."

"Done," Jarvis acknowledges.

Jane pauses and puts her hand on Darcy's shoulder. "Be safe."

Darcy smiles. "I will. Now go."

Jane goes, leaving Darcy alone in the common room. Darcy pulls a fifty caliber Desert Eagle out of the back of her waistband and rests it on her lap. She turns her focus back to the action in D.C.

Steve and Tony are fighting; two of the STRIKE team members are dead already, and as Darcy watches, Tony takes out a third with his repulsors while Steve goes hand-to-hand against Rumlow.

Inside the Triskelion, Alexander Pierce activates three incendiary devices, and three members of the World Security Council die screaming. Natasha spins on him, a gun in her hand, and Fury as well, but Pierce waves his phone with its activating application and says,  _ "Unless you want a two-inch hole in your sternum, I'd put that gun down." _

Sam and James shift their position and quietly land on the other side of the helicopter Fury arrived in. James unfastens the harness quickly, shifting silently around the helicopter and toward the door with a Glock in his hands, looking for an opening.

_ "That was armed the moment you pinned it on," _ Pierce says, and Natasha grudgingly lowers her weapon. 

_ "Ten seconds, Cap, Stark,"  _ Maria Hill says into the comm.

Steve manages to get the last targeting chip out of his utility belt. He throws it across the carrier bay to Tony, swinging his shield at Rumlow's face.

_ "Charlie lock!"  _ Tony shouts.  _ "Fire, fire, fire!" _

_ "Get out of there!"  _ Hill shouts back.

_ "We're getting!"  _ Stark assures her. He swoops back across the carrier bay. Just as Rumlow swings his weapon up to fire at Steve, Tony grabs him by the shield harness and snatches him up into the air, and they sail back out of the helicarrier the same way they went in - just in time for the massive guns to begin blowing holes in the ships.

Inside the Triskelion, the explosions in the sky have caught the attention of Alexander Pierce. He stares up and out the window. James, crouching down, passes through the outer set of doors.

Pierce sighs noisily.  _ "What a waste." _

_ "Still on the fence about Rogers's chances?" _ Natasha asks. 

There's a pause, and then Pierce says,  _ "Time to go, Councilwoman. You're gonna fly me out of here." _ He grips Natasha by the arm and pulls her toward the inner set of doors.  _ "You so much as move, Fury, and I blow a hole in her chest." _

Fury stands stock still. Natasha moves along with Pierce cooperatively.  _ "You know," _ Fury says,  _ "There was a time when I would've taken a bullet for you." _

_ "You already did,"  _ Pierce replies, smirking back at Fury over his shoulder. The inner chamber doors slide open.  _ "And you will again when it's useful - " _

In one fluid motion, James rises smoothly up from his crouch and backhands Pierce right across the face with his metal hand. Pierce stumbles backward. His phone goes flying across the room. Fury catches it one-handed and disarms the incendiary device; Natasha snatches it off her lapel, tosses it to the floor, and stomps on it.

James takes two steps forward and wraps his metal arm around Pierce's throat.  _ "Good afternoon, Councilman Pierce," _ he says cordially.  _ "It's been awhile." _

Pierce wheezes.  _ "We've already got your little bitch," _ he manages to grind out around James's iron grip.  _ "If you want her back alive, you'd better rethink this." _

James chuckles softly.  _ "Hey, кукла," he says, "you doing okay there?" _

"Absolutely okay," Darcy replies. "Still locked down. JARVIS filled that guest suite with knockout gas, so we'll have a live one to question."

_ "Good, good," _ James says.  _ "Want me to bring home take-out for dinner?" _

Darcy snorts out a soft laugh. "Sure thing, Chefchen," she says. "Whatever you want."

James gives Pierce a chilling smile.  _ "Well, that's some good news for you, Councilman Pierce," _ he says.  _ "Because I assure you, if the response had been any different, I'd be taking you apart a piece at a time until she was returned to me." _

Pierce snarls.  _ "You can't protect her forever," _ he manages.  _ "You'll turn your back one day and I'll have her. And the next time you see her, she won't remember who you are. She won't even remember her own name. But I promise you one thing: she'll smell like me." _

James's metal hand slowly closes. His right hand twists, jamming the barrel of his Glock up against Pierce's hip. He angles the gun downward and inward. He pulls with his metal hand, dragging Pierce's face right up close to his own. He smiles as he listens to Pierce choke and gasp for breath. And he pulls the trigger.

A loud  _ BOOM _ accompanies the sudden shuddering of the building, drowning out the high, thin scream that Pierce lets out; one of the helicarriers has fallen into the Triskelion itself. Darcy says, "You guys need to get out of there quick."

_ "Come on, James,"  _ Natasha says.  _ "Let's go." _

James nods. He squeezes hard with his metal hand, crushing Pierce's larynx, and then drops the man into the spreading pool of his own blood. He gives Pierce one last, cold grin, and then he turns, holstering his gun and following Natasha and Fury out of the room. Pierce lies on the floor, his body struggling for air from the top even as it bleeds out from the bottom. As her teammates climb into the helicopter outside, Darcy shuts off the security feed from the Council room.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On time today, even! Hope everyone in the U.S. had a happy Native American Day of Remembrance, and everyone not in the U.S. had a nice Thursday.

Natasha and Fury leave in the helicopter. Darcy summons Clint and the Quinjet; Sam harnesses himself to James again, and they fly free of the building perhaps half a minute or so before the fallen helicarrier passes through it, shearing off the top floors and sending them plummeting into the open bay doors below. Through the body cam on Tony's suit, Darcy watches as Sam and James approach.

_"Hey,"_ Sam says once they're in speaking range.

_"Nice work over there,"_ Tony says.

James looks Steve up and down. He is still dangling from Tony's arm; the suit's hand is clamped firmly around the shield harness.  _"What are you doing?"_ James asks.

_"Just hanging around,"_ Steve replies.

Darcy groans. "Just let him fall, Stark," she says, and the men all laugh. They remain hovering in place, watching the last of the destruction, until Clint and Bruce arrive. Clint pulls the jet into a hovering position nearby and opens the cargo bay door; Tony flies in first, depositing Steve neatly on the metal flooring, and Sam follows, touching down just as gently with James.

The cargo bay door closes again, and Clint says,  _"Everybody strap in; we're gonna be in New York in less than an hour."_

"Good," Darcy says. She turns her attention to the security feeds within the tower. "Stark, I got bad news for you. That cleaning crew worker? He's not your only mole."

_"Of course he's not,"_ Stark replies, sounding resigned.  _"How many more have you found so far?"_

"I've identified three, and JARVIS found two more." She pulls up the photographs from the individuals' employee badges and forwards them to both Stark and Pepper, looping the other woman into the conversation. "You doing all right down there, Pepper?"

_"No problems here,"_ Pepper replies.  _"In fact, I've been on a stockholder conference call for the last hour."_

"Ugh," Darcy groans. "I think I'd almost rather be under actual physical attack."

_"Just between you and me,"_ Pepper says conspiratorially,  _"I absolutely would prefer actual physical attack."_

Darcy giggles, just a little bit, and opens up a line to the StarkPad that Jane is using upstairs, pulling her in as well. "You doing okay up there, Janey?"

_"Fine,"_ Jane replies.  _"Getting antsy. Kinda like to get back to the labs."_ Through the StarkPad's camera, Darcy can see that Jane is sprawled out on the wide, comfortable couch inside the secure space, a bottle of water from the refrigerator open on the floor beside her. She rolls her eyes; only Tony Stark would have a luxuriously appointed panic room. 

"Soon," Darcy promises. "The boys are on their way back from D.C. now. They're gonna be all over the news tonight."

_"Destruction and panic?"_

"Fire, flood, pestilence, and plague," Darcy replies dryly.

Pepper laughs softly.  _"We should start calling them that."_

_"I have dibs on fire,"_ Tony calls.

_"I am_ _**not** _ _pestilence or plague,"_ Sam interjects.  _"I'll have you all know I keep up with all my vaccinations_ _**and** _ _I bathe regularly."_

"James is definitely pestilence," Darcy assures him. "And Steve is plague."

_"Me?"_ Steve demands.  _"Why me?"_

"Because pestilence and plague go together like a hand in a glove?" Darcy points out.

_"Hmm."_ Steve considers, and finally nods.  _"All right," he says, "I can take that."_

Darcy is cut off mid-chuckle when JARVIS suddenly opens a huge holographic display in front of her. "We may have a problem, Miss Lewis," he says.

Darcy stares at the display, watching in horror as a young woman dressed in the uniform of the coffee stand on the tenth floor makes her way past a set of security guards in the parking garage and pushes the button that opens the delivery gate. A box truck pulls in through the gate and its back door opens, releasing a flood of men in black tactical gear with skull logos on their arms. "Oh, shit," Darcy says softly. "I'm gonna need more ammo."

~*~

_"Darcy,"_ she hears a very calm voice say in the comm,  _"I'm coming up there."_

"No, Pepper, it isn't safe."

Pepper laughs softly in her ear.  _"Darcy,"_ she says,  _"_ _**I'm** _ _ not safe, remember? I'll be up there in just a minute, and we'll figure things out together. JARVIS, initiate full emergency tower lockdown," _ Pepper says.  _ "Code Twelve. Also release my office door, override Potts-delta-four-two-seven-strawberry." _

_ "Override accepted,"  _ JARVIS responds. 

The building-wide intercom system comes on with a polite chime, and every computer, tablet, and television in the building goes black. JARVIS's voice rings out from every speaker in the building, and for good measure, his words are also printed on every single computer, tablet, and television screen. "Code Twelve emergency lockdown initiated," he says. "This is not a drill. This facility is now under emergency lockdown. All elevators and stairwells will be inaccessible until further notice. Please remain calm."

_ "We're about half an hour out,  _ _ кукла," _ James says in her ear.  _ "You can hold 'em off for half an hour, can't you?" _

"I'm almost insulted that you're even asking me that question, Chefchen," Darcy replies, "but I know it's coming from a place of affection, so I'm going to let it slide this time."

The men in the Quinjet all laugh.  Darcy tunes them out, and watches on the big display as eight-inch thick pieces of steel slide down across every set of doors with access to a stairwell, as massive security gates roll down across the wide entrance to Grand Central Station, and every elevator in the building but one rises to its highest available access point before shutting down. The one elevator that is still functioning is idling on the main executive floor, where Pepper has paused to give her PA and her receptionist a few directives before sending them both into her office to hunker down in safety. 

Unhurried, she crosses the hallway and steps into that last elevator. It rises to the Avengers' residential common floor, where Darcy is waiting, and opens again, letting her off inside the common room. Then it slides shut and rises to the penthouse level before shutting down.

Pepper gives Darcy a smile. "Let me change," she says. She crosses the common room and disappears up the spiral staircase that passes through all the Avengers' residential floors - it is the only staircase in the entire building that can't be sealed off. When she returns just a few minutes later, her hair is pulled back in a neat ponytail and she is wearing a pair of cut-off denim shorts and a white tank. It is the most casual thing Darcy has ever seen Pepper wear, and she says so.

Pepper laughs softly. "Well, my suits are expensive," she explains. "I don't want to burn one up." She stretches, her back cracking, and turns to face the big security display with a serious expression. "So here's what we're going to do," she says. "We're going to watch these idiots fall for every trap that's been built into this tower, and JARVIS is going to funnel them all right where we want them. And then we're going to lock them up and JARVIS is going to hit them with knockout gas."

Darcy blinks. "Well if that's all we're going to do, what did you change clothes for? You aren't going to need to set anything on fire."

"Because one thing I've learned from watching all of you is that you can't plan for every contingency, and there's always a possibility that at least one or two of your opponents aren't idiots." Pepper points at one of the displays, where one of the infiltrators appears to be working on an elevator door rather than the stairwell door that his compatriots are focusing on. "JARVIS, please close the elevator shafts at the fifth floor."

"Done, Miss Potts," JARVIS replies.

Darcy nods. "Will they be able to take hostages?" she asks.

Pepper sighs. "I'd like to say no, since the lower floors are mostly storage and servers and things, so there shouldn't really be anyone down there. But it's always possible. Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

Darcy reaches over and raps her knuckles against the wooden end table again. Pepper reaches up and raps her own knuckles against her head. Darcy chuffs out a laugh, and Pepper grins. "My grandmother always used to do that," she explains. "She'd say something about knocking on wood and then she'd knock on Granddaddy's head."

Darcy laughs. "I'm going to start doing that to James."

Through the earpiece, James rewards her with a long-suffering sigh.

"How much longer, Chefchen?" Darcy asks.

_"About five minutes since the last time you asked,"_ he replies.  _"I'll let you know when we're within sight of the tower."_

Darcy sighs dramatically. "Fine," she says. "Pepper, I'm going to need your help."

Pepper nods. "What do you want to do?"

Darcy holds out her hands. "Help me up?"

Pepper does, and then supports Darcy as she hobbles around the coffee table to sit in a chair on the other side of the room. This puts Darcy's back to the wall and lets her face the elevators directly, and once Pepper pushes the couch back, it also gives her a direct line of sight on the big glass doors that open out onto the landing pad – slash – balcony. Pepper then cheerfully trots up the stairs to Darcy's apartment and raids the weaponry stash, bringing back two more semi-automatic handguns and a bag of pre-loaded clips. Darcy organizes the weapons and the clips on the end table at her left hand, and she and Pepper watch as the infiltrators make their way through the server farm on the second floor.

Darcy's eyebrows furrow. "Those aren't JARVIS's servers, are they?"

"No," Pepper says, shaking her head.

_"There's not a chance in hell that they could find their way to JARVIS's servers,"_ Tony asserts.  _"I would stake my life on that."_

_"Stark, you've staked your life on dice rolls in Vegas,"_ Clint replied.  _"That doesn't really give me much confidence."_

_"How about this, then?"_ Tony suggested.  _"I'm willing to stake Pepper and Darcy's lives on it, how about that?"_

There is a long silence over the comms, and Darcy and Pepper exchange a significant glance. Darcy knows that Pepper dislikes the implication that she needs to be protected, but Darcy gets it; she's staked her own and James's lives - on her implant, on intel, on their skills and training - more than once, and she understands where Tony is coming from.

"Okay, so we don't have to worry about JARVIS," Darcy says. "That's good news. Is there anything on the storage floors that we should be concerned about?" She pauses. "Stark, you're not storing anything explosive on those floors, are you?"

_"No,"_ Tony replies.  _"All the dangerous stuff is locked up in my lab."_

"Not all of it," Pepper says, grinning viciously. " _I'm_ standing in the common room."

Another ripple of laughter floods the comm, but it is interrupted by JARVIS's voice. "Miss Potts, Miss Lewis, I wish to draw your attention to camera twelve."

Both of them turn to look, and Darcy swears in Ukrainian. Two of the infiltrators have located an accessible entry into the ventilation system through a return-air shaft, and are in the process of pulling the metal covering panel off the wall. "JARVIS, where does that vent shaft go?"

"Straight up," JARVIS replies. "Fortunately, there are no branches capable of supporting the weight of an adult human male."

"Unfortunately?" Darcy prompts.

_"Unfortunately, there are five other openings just like that one that they can get out of,"_ Clint says.  _"One of them is right there in the common room."_

"Is it?" Darcy asks, her eyes scanning the room. She eventually locates the return-air vent, hidden behind a low side table with a silk flower arrangement on top. She considers it for a long moment. "Are any of the other openings in places where they might be able to take hostages?"

"Yes," JARVIS replies. "There are currently ten employees in the lounge on the fiftieth floor."

"Okay," Darcy says. "Then we need to give them a reason to bypass that floor."

Pepper considers her. "What are you thinking?"

"JARVIS," Darcy says, "can you open a display screen like this one down there where they can see it?"

"I can," JARVIS replies. "What would you like it to display?"

"Me," Darcy replies. She waits for JARVIS to tell her she's being displayed and she looks directly into the camera. "Hello, boys," she says.

On the security footage, she sees the HYDRA agents spin, weapons drawn, only to relax at the sight of her holographic projection. She smiles. "Looking for me? I'll give you a hint: I'm all the way up at the top, and I'm easy pickings! I've got a broken leg."

One of the infiltrators – the one Darcy and Pepper had already pegged as the smart one – steps forward. "Or why don't we just start upward and kill everyone we find on the way?"

"Well, I can't stop you," Darcy replies, "But I don't suggest it.  Because if you come straight here, well, not only are there no other Avengers here right now, but I'm also in a pretty good mood, so I can  _ possibly _ be convinced to give myself up with a minimum amount of fuss. But if you do that, if you stop and hurt people on the way up here? T hen by the time you get to me, not only will the rest of my team be here to stop you, but we're all gonna be really,  _really_ pissed off." She smiles. "Your choice."

She signals JARVIS to close the outgoing feed, and she and Pepper watch on the display as the infiltrators discuss it among themselves. They quickly come to the conclusion that what Darcy is offering might be the best they're going to get, and then one of them gets his phone out and looks at the news.  _"Shit,"_ he says.  _"Shit, you guys, look, look at the news from Washington."_

There is a long moment of silence among the HYDRA agents. Then the smart one speaks.  _"We've got one shot, fellas,"_ he says.  _"So let's not fuck it up."_

Darcy smirks.

They start up the vent shaft one at a time, a total of five agents, with two left behind to guard the entry.

Pepper crosses the common room and moves the silk flower basket to the coffee table, then grabs the low decorative table and moves it out of the way. Then she unscrews the vent panel and moves the decorative metal grating out of the way.

_"Five minutes out,_ _ кукла," _ James says. 

Darcy grins. "Don't rush on my account." She tucks the gun in her hand between her hip and the back of the chair. Pepper steps back and out of sight, the other hidden weapon.

It actually doesn't take very long for the first of the HYDRA agents to make it up to the top of the shaft, especially considering that they're climbing over eighty floors; they must have some kind of specialized gear. She's going to want a look at that. Darcy grins at the sight of his head. "Hi, there," she says.

He leans out carefully and looks around. He speaks into his own comm. "She's alone," he says. He narrows his eyes at her propped-up leg and continues, "And I think she really is injured."

"I really am injured," she confirms. "You're actually gonna have to help me up. I just broke it last night, and I can't walk on it yet."

He studies her for a long moment. She sees in his eyes when he commits to the risk, and he reaches up to help himself out of the shaft. She pulls the gun out from under her hip and shoots him in the throat.

The sound of his companions screaming as the weight of his body bears them all back down the vent shaft is fairly satisfying.

Neither Darcy nor Pepper assumes that all five agents fell; it's almost a sure bet that at least one of them managed to hang on. In just a moment, they're proved correct. Darcy isn't sure how he's hanging on, but he's somehow managed to come halfway through the vent, gun first. "Move," he says, "and I'll shoot you in the kneecaps."

Darcy holds up both hands. They're empty. "Oh, my," she says, aping a very bad, very breathless Southern belle sort of accent. "I do believe I have been overpowered. I suppose I must surrender."

He never even sees Pepper until it's too late; he returns to the ground floor via express, landing on the head of the sixth infiltrator, who has been trying to pull the others out of the vent on the off-chance that one of them survived the ninety-floor fall. Judging by the reaction from the seventh guy, Darcy thinks probably none of them did. She guesses probably the guy who got his head landed on didn't survive either. She's okay with that.

Just about a minute later, as Pepper and Darcy are watching the last of their goons hurry across the server floor in search of the rest of the team, there is a commotion on the landing pad. Sam lands first, James nearly ripping the harness in his hurry to get loose, and then Tony deposits Steve on his feet before going through the removal equipment. Once he's free from the suit, he moves toward Pepper as quickly as James moved toward Darcy.

Darcy laughs softly at James's overprotective instincts as he tuts over her leg, making sure that it's comfortable, and checks her weapons. She lets him make himself feel better, then reaches out and winds her hands into his hair, tugging him in for a warm kiss. "I'm  _ fine, _ Chefchen," she says softly. "Really. You should be worrying about the HYDRA goons downstairs."

"I ain't worrying about anything until Banner and Barton get down here from the roof," James says. "Once they're here, we're gonna make a plan and then we're gonna take the bastards out."

"We're here," Clint interjects as he and Bruce come down the spiral staircase. "What's the situation?"

"There are six dead HYDRA agents at the bottom of the air conditioner shaft," JARVIS reports, "and six more in the server farm. They appear to be seeking information and planting explosives."

"Well, that can't be allowed to continue," Tony says reasonably.

"Gimme a schematic of the server farm," Barton says, "and we'll talk tactics."

The requested schematic appears in the air, and they cluster around it. Darcy is forced to throw bullets at the back of Clint's head until he moves so that she can see from her chair. After a great deal of back-and-forth, they eventually agree on a plan: Clint, James, Steve, and Tony will enter the server room through the back entrance, which is disguised as a large cabinet and thus has not yet been discovered by the intruders. Once they are inside, JARVIS will cut the power to the server room. The four Avengers, being ready for this action, will don night-vision goggles and do what they do best, hopefully managing to take some of the intruders alive.

"What about the exits?" Sam asks. "I can man one, obviously, but what about the other one?"

"I'll manage it," Pepper replies. She smiles. "I may not be a full-time Avenger, but I can pull my weight here."

"Is there anything I should be doing?" Bruce asks.

"Stay back, for now," Tony replies simply. "If you're needed, we'll call you in, but frankly just the idea of the amount of damage the Other Guy could do in that server room makes me want to wet myself."

A laugh ripples around the room. Then Steve says, "Okay, everyone clear?" There are nods all around, and he says, "All right, let's get into place."

JARVIS brings one of the elevators for them, and they pile into it. The doors slide closed, and Darcy sighs into the empty common room. "I'll just wait here, then, shall I?"

~*~

Now that she has time to watch, Darcy studies the behavior of the intruders in the server room and realizes why they are there. They are moving up and down the racks of servers, dropping hard lines into each server, using handheld units to scan through each server, and then moving on when they didn't find what they were looking for. "Tony," she says, "I don't think I was the primary target here."

_ "What do you mean?" _ Tony asks.

"They're dropping hard lines into the servers," she explains. "I think the attack on me was a distraction. I don't think they were after me at all."

_ "Huh,"  _ Tony says.  _ "That puts a new face on things." _

_ "They might not be HYDRA at all," _ Steve comments.  _ "Which would mean they wouldn't have cyanide pills." _

"I disagree. I'm almost certain at least some of them really were HYDRA," Darcy says. "They were too eager to get me. I just feel like I might have been a secondary objective."

_ "We'll see. Take some alive if you can,"  _ James orders.

_ "Everyone in position?"  _ Clint asks. There are affirmative responses from everyone. 

Tony says,  _ "Okay, go." _

Darcy watches on the screen as the hidden door behind the cabinet in the far back of the server room opens and the Avengers step through, one at a time on silent feet. They range themselves along the back of the room, night-vision goggles ready, and then Tony makes a signal with his hand. The lights go off. JARVIS switches the camera to night vision, and Darcy watches as the Avengers move forward, still as silent as possible, and begin attacking. There are ten HYDRA agents in the room; by the time any of them realize what is going on, five of them are lying unconscious on the floor. The other five, to their credit, do not waste time pulling weapons, but it's really no use; they've been taken... their arms are removed from their hands almost as quickly as they can draw them and with a few well-directed slams to the head, they go down like sacks of potatoes one by one.

Only one of them manages to bite down on a cyanide pill; he goes to his knees, frothing, and manages to choke out  _ "Cut off one head..." _ before losing the ability to speak. Within seconds, he is dead. 

Tony takes his goggles off.  _ "JARVIS," _ he says,  _ "lights at thirty percent." _

The lights come up, and JARVIS incrementally increases them to full power as the Avengers begin applying zip ties to the intruders' wrists and checking their mouths for cyanide pills. Four of the remaining intruders have them; James removes them with his metal hand.

"JARVIS," Darcy says, "are there any more intruders, or anyone acting funny? Anything we need to take care of before we lift the lockdown?"

"No, Miss Lewis," JARVIS replies. "The suspected HYDRA moles we identified earlier have all been contained by individual floor security; the only one remaining unapprehended is the cleaning crew member who is still unconscious in the guest suite downstairs."

"Excellent," Darcy says. "Let's lift the lockdown and send some security to round up the ones the Avengers have, so they can get free to come up here and deal with our cleaning lady."

"The cleaning crew member is a man, Miss Lewis," JARVIS replies.

Darcy sighs. "Yes, JARVIS, I know that."

"Very well, Miss Lewis."

The elevators turn back on with a soft whoosh, and on the building-wide display, Darcy sees the various bulkheads and security gates beginning to rise. JARVIS blanks all the screens in the building again, and a chime sounds.  _ "Security lockdown has been lifted," _ he says, the words scrolling across all of the screens.  _ "You may return to your regular tasks. Thank you for your cooperation." _

The clean-up is fairly quick and routine; Stark Industries security meets Tony and the others outside the server room and collects the infiltrating agents, hauling them down into a sub-basement to incarcerate them until the Avengers should decide what to do with them. Jane is released from the panic room and, after checking on Darcy, she makes a beeline back to her lab. Pepper goes straight to the penthouse, changes clothes, and goes back to work. The Avengers themselves come upstairs, pausing on the way to acquire the cleaning crew agent and make sure his innocent co-worker is unharmed, and they troop up into the common room with the infiltrator in tow.

Darcy grins broadly at their return, holding out her hands to James and wiggling her fingers like a child. He grins back and comes to her side, leaning down for a warm kiss before picking her up. He settles himself down into the chair she's been occupying and nestles her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her waist. "Okay," he says. "Let's get this handled; I'm ready for today to be over."


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which several of the Avengers put on their sassypants, because we all need a good chuckle after the day they've had. And also, Darcy has had it up to here with these motherfuckin cephalopods on this motherfuckin plane.

He stands before them, his hands zip-tied behind his back and his ankles hobbled together. "I'm not telling you assholes anything."

"Sure you are. You just don't know it yet."

The infiltrator glares at James. "You can't make me talk."

Darcy laughs low in her throat. "Better than you have said the same thing." She tilts her head, studying him. "Do you know who we are?"

"You're the Avengers," the man spits. "Bunch of tights-wearing do-gooders."

Tony rolls his eyes. "You sound like a two-bit villain from a Superman comic."

Darcy grins a shark's grin. "I don't mean them, sweetheart," she says. "I mean us. Me and this lunkhead I'm using for a cushion."

The man shrugs. "Avengers. I don't know. I don't care, either."

She laughs low in her throat. "Have you ever heard of the Winter Soldier and his Snow Maiden?"

And now the man is the one who rolls his eyes. "Yeah, sure. HYDRA's boogey-man. What about them?"

"Oh, is that what they're calling it?" James asks. "A boogey-man? Tell me something, kid, what's the Winter Soldier look like?"

"Nobody knows," the man replies. "Just that he's got a metal arm and supposedly gets frozen when he's not on a mission."

"A metal arm?" Darcy asks. She shifts, picking up James's metal arm and pulling it around her body so that the agent can see it. "Like this one?"

That agent stares at it, then swallows hard. "Bullshit," he says. "That's just... that's just a hologram or something."

Darcy chortles. "Sure thing, kid. Whatever helps you sleep at night."

"It doesn't matter," the man says, squaring his shoulders. "You're not gonna do anything to me anyway. You're the good guys." He says the last two words like an insult.

"Are we?" Sam asks, his voice low and smooth. "Are you sure about that?"

"You want to think very carefully about the answer to that question, son," Steve says from his position beside Clint. "And remember who  _ I _ am."

"Yeah, sure, Captain America, famous Nazi hunter." The man rolls his eyes again.

"Mhm," Steve says. "That's right. And what do you call yourself?"

"I serve HYDRA!" the man declares, a fanatical gleam in his eye.

Steve nods. "I know you do. And Johann Schmidt, who founded HYDRA, was a...."

"Ooh, ooh, I know!" Clint exclaims. "He was a Nazi!"

"That's right! Gold star for you!" Steve exclaims, reaching up to pat Clint on the head.

Bruce chuffs a laugh, going into the kitchen for a drink. "Hey, anybody want anything while I'm in here?" He pauses, leaning around the counter to look at the infiltrator. "Not you, though. You get nothing."

Darcy smirks. "Can I have some iced tea, please?"

"Coffee for me, if there is any," Tony says, while James asks for ice water. Steve and Clint both shake their heads. Bruce comes back with the drinks all on a tray, handing them out, and then excuses himself for a moment.

Tony studies the infiltrator. "So, nothing?" he says. "Not even a name? I mean, you can't be too important, since they haven't even given you a cyanide pill yet. You can tell us your name, right?"

"No," the young man replies, glaring.

"Let's give him a name," Darcy suggests. "Like a puppy."

"You wanna call him Fido, doll?" Steve asks, grinning.

"Nah," Darcy says. "I was thinking something more along the lines of Mr. Fluffynuts."

Clint guffaws. "You're not right, Darce."

Darcy grins. "I know."

Bruce returns, a small box in his hands. "I'm going to go ahead and begin this interrogation," he says. He places the box down on the coffee table, flips it open, and removes a syringe. It contains a thick reddish liquid.

Steve says, "What is that?"

Bruce grins at him, then turns to the mole. "I'm actually going to need a hand with this. Clint?" To the man he says, "Don't worry, this will hurt but not too badly. Mostly it burns a little bit." He walks around behind the man. Clint comes to his side, and Bruce says, "Will you pull his shirt up, please?"

Clint obeys, and Bruce reaches out and tugs the man's waistband down, exposing the upper curve of his butt. The man starts to panic and try to flail away, so Clint gets a grip on him around his neck and holds onto him, giving Bruce a chance to jam his needle into the man's ass and press the plunger.

The man screams as the liquid inside the syringe is injected into him, but Bruce is inexorable, and he empties the syringe before pulling it out. Clint lets the man fall, and he lies on the floor, writhing and sweating and whimpering for quite some time.

Finally, Bruce sighs and nudges him with his toe. "It doesn't hurt that badly," he says. "Get up and start talking. Who are you and who do you work for?"

"Jeremy Wilkes," the man replies, opening his eyes but declining to rise. "I work for Justin Hammer."

Tony sits up straight. "Are you serious?"

The man – Wilkes – nods. "Hammer paired up with A.I.M. to build a better Iron Man, but they needed information, and why am I telling you all this oh my god what did you stick me with?"

Bruce grins. "Experimental truth serum," he says. "Thanks for your cooperation on the clinical test; I'll make sure you get mentioned in the acknowledgements when I publish."

Wilkes moans softly and falls backward onto the carpet, his bound hands underneath him. "No. No, they'll kill me."

"Sweetheart," Darcy says in her most patronizing tone, "if you don't talk,  _ I'll _ kill you. You're dead either way, and I  _ promise _ you that I will take longer to do it than they would, and you'll still talk before I'm done."

Wilkes swallows hard. Tony leans forward, his elbows on his knees. "What information were you after?"

"I was just supposed to get whatever I could get. Anything at all. Schedules, movements, anything." He gestures at Darcy. "I told them about her coming in last night with a broken leg, for example."

"Mhm," Tony says. "I think we're going to need a comprehensive list of everything you ever told them. Not right this minute, though; you'll have time for that. First, I want to know why you said you were with HYDRA. Is Hammer working with them?"

"No, A.I.M. is," Wilkes replies. "They're all about the really hardcore science, stuff regular docs can't do when they're stuck under oversight boards. Experiments on people and stuff. There's this one project called Centipede, my buddy was working on it, and they were shooting people up with some kind of thing that made them explode."

"Like Extremis?" Darcy asks.

Wilkes shrugs. "I don't know what that is."

"Huh." Darcy and Tony exchange a glance.

"So they're still trying to make super soldiers," Steve says, and he sounds tired. "That's... that's getting really old, to be honest."

"Well, you know," Darcy says, "it's already worked three times. I guess they figure if they keep trying, eventually they can make it work more."

"Four times," Tony replies. "Possibly five."

"I wouldn't count myself in that," Bruce demurs. "I'm not really a super soldier."

"No, but you have to admit that the Other Guy is pretty damn authoritative when it comes down to it," Steve points out. "Look at what just happened yesterday in D.C. I'm not sure we'd have made it out of there if it hadn't been for him." He pauses, and then gives Bruce a wry smile. "For you."

Bruce flushes, but doesn't object any more. Clint says, "So basically what you're telling us is that these are the bad scientists who have no ethics and feel like it's totally okay to do experiments on humans and stuff."

Wilkes shrugs one shoulder. "Basically."

"Fantastic," Tony says. "Stuff to burn down. I'm going to want a list of all the locations you know about so we can raid them all."

Wilkes laughs. "I'm not telling you. I don't care what you shoot me up with."

"You're telling us," Darcy says. "Because Bruce will shoot you up again, and  _ if _ you manage to fight off the effects of whatever it is that he made, then James will sit on your legs while I peel your face off in one-inch strips." 

A silence fell on the room. After a moment, Tony clears his throat. "I'm sure we won't need to go that far," he says.

"I'm not," Darcy replies. "And I'm tired of this. I'm tired of HYDRA, I'm tired of evil scientists, and I'm really fucking tired of having a broken leg. We just took down the international evil spy organization that stole my life from me and James's from him, and we couldn't even get in a congratulatory we-saved-the-world fuck before we had to fight off an infiltration and attack  _ in our own house. _ I'm absolutely fucking sick of this shit, and if I have to peel the skin off this asshole's face to get him to give up the locations we need to nuke from fucking orbit, then I'll by god peel the skin off his face, and if I need to keep going I'll peel the skin off his cock, too." She turns her head and makes eye contact with Wilkes. "Am I making myself very fucking clear?"

James rubs her back. "You need a nap," he comments.

Darcy snarls wordlessly.

"I have an idea," Steve says. "Why don't we adjourn for now to give Mr. Wilkes here a chance to think about his options? We can reconvene at our own convenience rather than his." He glances at Wilkes. "Are there any more attacks planned, or anything else that we need to know about for the next, say, week?"

"Not really," Wilkes says. "I mean, they might come looking when none of us come back, but after what you assholes did in D.C., it might be awhile before they notice."

"Good," Steve says, nodding. "Let's do that, then. Tony, I assume they're being kept in solitary down there?"

Tony nods. "Soundproofed cells."

"Good enough for me. I say leave 'em down there for a few days, let them really think about things. Then we can have conversations with them one at a time."

"Or we can just hand them over to the CIA," Clint offered. "I have a contact who'll be able to make sure that they're..." paused, rubbing his chin, and then said, delicately, "appropriately handled."

"That sounds good." Steve looks at Tony. "Okay by you?"

"Okay by me." Tony looks over at James and Darcy. "You two?"

Darcy and James exchange a glance before giving their consent; Bruce and Sam add theirs as well. JARVIS summons a security guard who hauls Wilkes away, and they are all just about to disperse when Darcy says "Wait a second. What the hell happened to Natasha?"

"She left with Fury on the helicopter," Sam says. "I figured she'd check in with you."

Darcy shakes her head. With her implant she reaches for Natasha's comm, which is turned off, and her StarkPhone, which dumps directly to voice mail. She sends a text message and then gives Clint a significant look. "If you hear from her, you tell us. Details aren't necessary; we just want to know that she's alive and okay."

Clint nods. "Will do."

James stands then, holding Darcy in his arms. "All right," he says. "I don't know about the rest of you, and frankly I don't give a shit. I'm exhausted and I'm going home. You can all do whatever the hell you want." With that, he heads for the elevator, still carrying Darcy.

"You know," she says as the elevator rises, an expression of amusement on her face, "I might not have been done there yet."

He quirks an eyebrow at her. "Were you done?"

She grins. "Yes. But I might not have been. You could have asked."

"I figured you'd tell me." He bumps her forehead with his. "How's the leg?"

"Better." She switches her eye to its X-ray function and takes a look. "Down to a hairline fracture. I'll probably be fine to walk on it tomorrow."

"You'll show me what it looks like before you get out of bed," he tells her. "I'll make that decision."

"I  _ am _ my own person, Chefchen," she reminds him gently.

He nods. "I know. But you're also my wife and I'm your commanding officer."

"Hmph," she grumps. "I'm starting to think I should take a lesson in this modern feminism stuff. Pepper doesn't let Tony talk to her like that."

He laughs. "Yeah, well, that's Pepper and Tony, ain't it?"

She grins. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure he likes it when she bosses him around." She tugs on his earlobe as the elevator door opens on their floor. "Would you like it if I bossed you around, Chefchen?"

"Don't you already?" he shoots back.

She leans up and presses her lips to his. "Let's get a shower, Chefchen," she murmurs. "Then you can take me to bed and we'll see who gives the orders then."

He chuckles deep in his chest. "Yes, ma'am."

~*~

True to Darcy's word, she's on her feet - albeit carefully, and with the bone still splint-supported - the next morning. The day is low-key; Steve stayed the night at Clint's, and by the time he rolls in a little after noon, Darcy and James are sprawled out together on the wide sofa, watching telenovelas on one of the Spanish satellite channels.

Steve stops behind the sofa and leans his hip on it, watching the action on the television. He cocks his head, taking everything in, before he finally says, "The teenage girl, is she the woman's secret daughter or the man's secret girlfriend?"

"Neither one," Darcy replies. "The woman is her aunt who raised her, and the man is trying to convince the aunt to let the girl come with him to Mallorca as a babysitter for his small children. He has nefarious designs." She waggles her eyebrows suggestively.

"I can't even take you seriously when you talk like that," Steve says, shaking his head.

"It's a widespread problem," James assures him.

"You're both mean," she complains without any real heat.

Steve reaches over the back of the couch and ruffles her hair. "You like it." He grins down at her, and she grins back up at him. Then he pauses and says, a little awkwardly, "So... I'm actually just here to get a change of clothes and my sketchbook, and I'm going back down to Clint's."

"So go," James says. He pauses, and then he tips his head back and looks up at Steve through narrowed eyes. "Stevie," he says. "Pal. Do you wanna move in down there with Clint?"

"Um." Steve goes bright red from his temples to somewhere under the collar of his shirt.

Darcy chortles. James says, "You know we ain't gonna get our feelings hurt if you wanna move, right? He's your  _ soul mate, _ for the love of Solzhenitsyn."

Steve sighs a little heavily and comes around the couch, sitting down in the armchair. James pauses the television and Darcy sits up a little bit, trying to look attentive and thoughtful. "I just..." Steve begins. Then he pauses and swallows, thinking about it. "I just worry because... because sometimes it feels so much like a dream," he admits. "Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I think,  _ Is it real? Is he really here? Or did I just make it all up? _ "

"That ain't gonna stop, pal," James says. "I hate to break it to you."

Steve sighs again, running his hands through his hair. "I know," he admits. "So I guess I just... I haven't wanted to move because I like knowing that this is home. With you. Both of you," he adds, with an apologetic glance at Darcy.

Darcy shrugs. "Steve," she says, "you and James have been brothers since long before I was born. If you think for a minute that there will ever be a time when you  _ won't _ have a home with us, then frankly you're not as smart as I thought you were."

Steve laughs softly. "I've always been a little boneheaded," he admits.

"Boy, if that ain't a fact," James agrees, smirking. "Get out of here, punk. Go spend time with your boy. We'll work everything out later, okay?"

Steve nods. "Okay." He pauses on his way past James and drops his hand to James's human shoulder, squeezing firmly. James reaches up and pats him on the bicep. Then Steve disappears into his room. When he comes back out a few minutes later, he has a duffel bag over his shoulder. "I'll see you guys later tonight, maybe," he says as he steps into the elevator.

"Sure," Darcy says, snuggling back down into James's arms. "Give us a call, and we'll figure something out."

Then Steve is gone, and it's just the two of them. For a long moment, the apartment is very quiet. Then James leans down and nuzzles in behind Darcy's ear. "Alone at last," he murmurs against her skin, and she shudders delicately at the soft touch of his breath.

"James," she whispers. "Chefchen."

He lays her back on the sofa and takes her apart the way that only he can, the way that only he ever has. He owns her with his hands and his mouth, and he makes her cry and wail and beg before he slides himself home between her thighs, and he holds her tightly and whispers his love for her in all the languages that he knows. And she holds him back, and she whispers her love back to him. And for a while, everything is perfect for them.

~*~

Of course it couldn't last.

~*~

It takes a few days, during which Wilkes eventually (and unwillingly) gives up most of what he knows, but Clint finally manages to get in touch with his contact at the CIA. Her name is Sharon Carter, and she used to work for SHIELD, and she's also Peggy Carter's great-niece. This means nothing to Darcy, but James and Steve - especially Steve - are quite affected by this fact when she announces it to them at their introduction. "I grew up hearing stories about Captain America and Bucky Barnes at Aunt Peggy's knee," she tells them, "so it's an honor to meet you both."

"Your aunt was an amazing woman," Steve tells Sharon softly.

And Sharon grins, just a little bit. "She still is, on her better days." Off Steve and James's matching expressions of confusion, she explains: "Aunt Peggy's still alive. You didn't know?"

They both shake their heads. "We figured... as long as it's been..." James explains haltingly.

But Sharon is nodding. "No, that makes sense. And she's... well, to be honest, she's not doing too well. She has more bad days than good days, and on the bad days she might or might not know who you are. But on her good days, she's still as sharp as she ever was. And I know she's wondered why you don't come and see her. I'll tell her you didn't know, but now that you do, you'd better get down to D.C. You don't want to piss her off."

Steve laughs. "The last time I did," he says, "she shot at me. She always claimed afterward that she was just testing the shield to make sure it worked like Howard said it would, but I saw the expression on her face."

"I remember that," James agrees, chuckling. "You came out of that meeting with Stark paler than you were the last time you had pneumonia."

Darcy, who has been standing to the side, has never heard this story, and when she speaks, she apes Thor's accent. "This tale intrigues me; I wish to hear it all!"

James laughs. "Oh, I'll tell you every bit of it, кукла. See, what happened was, Stevie here couldn't figure out how to keep his lips to himself once the girls started noticin' how pretty he was."

Steve yelps. "That is  _ not _ true!  _ She _ grabbed  _ me _ !"

Darcy smirks. "And  _ of course _ you couldn't  _ not _ kiss her; that would be rude and Captain America is never rude."

Steve pouts. It's adorably ineffective.

Sharon is leading the CIA team that has come to take custody of the HYDRA operatives. She oversees the loading of those men onto a transport as well as the inventory of their gear, and works with Darcy briefly over the paperwork for the dead operatives who have already been turned over to the medical examiner's office. Then she's gone, but not before she wrangles a promise from Steve and Bucky to come with her to D.C. and visit Peggy within the next few weeks. She also promises, in return, to make sure that any information the CIA extracts from the operatives regarding HYDRA is passed on to the Avengers, and that the Avengers are, if not included, at least advised and consulted before the CIA moves on any of that information.

Before she leaves, she drops one more bomb on them. "I talked with Bobbi last night," she says to Clint.

Clint looks surprised. He explains to the room at large that Bobbi is his ex-wife, and then says to Sharon, "I didn't know she was even in the States."

Sharon nods. "She's been doing undercover - you know that - but she got in touch with me specifically because she wanted someone else to know where she was and what she was doing. Someone outside SHIELD, I mean."

"SHIELD doesn't exist any more," Steve says firmly.

Sharon laughs softly. "It's cute how you think that," she says in a tone that indicates it's definitely not. "Fury doesn't give up things he thinks are his that easily. Word is he's not in official command any more, but it's still basically running in his track."

"Who's running it?" Tony asks.

"Phil Coulson," Sharon replies, and the Avengers who were present on the helicarrier before the attack on New York become very vocally incensed. Sharon is confused until Clint manages to stop spluttering long enough to explain that Fury had told them Coulson was dead, and then she says, "Well, that was a dick move." She shakes her head. "If I talk to Bobbi again, I'll pass along your thoughts on the matter." With a nod to the room at large, she goes.

Over the next week or so, the Avengers go into hunting mode. Steve, James, and Clint, the tactical heads of the team, start working on the information they already have. They consult with Tony about Hammer Industries and about Advanced Idea Mechanics, and they begin sorting through the intel they have from Wilkes and the other agents and searching out more.

While they're doing that, Tony and Darcy sit down to talk about Zola.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter to go, guys! Hope you're still enjoying. Have a little fluffy family time.

**May 2013**

**New York, NY**

"I don't think he's gone," Tony says when Darcy, responding to his polite summons, sticks her head into his lab one day about a week after D.C.

"Who?" Darcy asks.

"Zola. Come in and shut the door." Tony waits until she has done so and then says, "JARVIS, engage privacy protocol three."

The Cone of Silence, as Tony calls it, always makes Darcy shake her head a little bit, like a dog. She realizes now what it is that's so disconcerting about it. "Dammit, Tony," she says. "You could tell me that your damn protocol blocks wireless signals; I was in the middle of downloading something."

He raises an eyebrow at her. "With your head?"

"No, with my ass." She rolls her eyes. "You idiot, what else would I be downloading something with?"

"A computer, like everyone else?" Tony suggests. "If you're not careful, you're gonna end up with a virus."

"I'll install McAfee," Darcy snarks. "What do you  _ want, _ Tony?"

"To talk about Zola," Tony replies. "I don't think he's gone."

Darcy raises an eyebrow and hooks one of Tony's lab stools, seating herself. "I'm listening."

Tony holds up the USB drive that Darcy brought out of Carlton Becker's home. "I was digging through this thing, and I want you to see what I found." He has JARVIS pull up the data and begins flicking through it. "It wasn't just Pierce that Becker was in contact with. He was also sending data to Zola - or at least, to the computer system at Camp Lehigh."

Darcy nods. "I've been thinking about that. About what Zola said. He claimed he was so expanded - but he wasn't even  _ turned on _ when you guys got there, was he?"

Tony shakes his head. "Nope."

"I have a feeling that your deduction about the tape and its memory capacity was more accurate than Zola even realized." She taps at her chin with one finger, her eyes roving over the data on Tony's display. "He was even more of a slave than me or James. Of course, the difference is that he volunteered. He did it to himself, out of his own fear of death."

Tony nods. "That does make a difference."

"So you think he's still out there? What, you think there were backups?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not sure. I just think it's worth looking into."

Darcy nods again. "Okay. How do you suggest we do that?"

"Well," Tony says, and he flicks at something on the display. The data is replaced by a photograph of a woman, white, older and slender and slightly haughty looking. "I was thinking we might start with her."

Darcy tilts her head just a little bit, and a slow smile spreads across her face. "Why, Tony," she says, "I think you might have just had a scathingly brilliant idea."

"Oh," Tony replies, grinning, "I've had more than one."

~*~

**July 2013**

**New York, NY**

It takes a few weeks to get everything set up, and Darcy has to take a crash course in charity fundraising, but once it's done, it makes the news in a big way. Darcy gets a phone call from Pamela on a Thursday afternoon, and her cousin is breathless. "Darcy," she says. "Did you do this?"

"Did I do what?" Darcy asks.

"Did you get the Maria Stark Foundation to decide they want to partner with us?" Pamela's breathlessness is giving way to giddiness. "Did you do this?"

"I actually did not," Darcy says, completely honest. "It was Tony's idea."

"Tony Stark?"

"Yep." Darcy grins, leaning back in her chair and taking a sip of her coffee. "He occasionally takes notions. It's a thing that he does. Usually they involve blowing things up in the lab, but it looks like this month he wants to throw parties or something, and charity galas are the only kind of party Pepper lets him throw any more."

Pamela laughs. "She's got him on a tight leash."

"Wouldn't you?" Darcy asks reasonably. "The man's certifiable."

"You make a good point." Pamela sighs softly. "I'm glad he's not mine to deal with."

"Me, too," Darcy says firmly. She laughs. "It's hard enough being on a team with him; half the time I'm having to stop Steve or James from trying to kill him because he's an asshole, and the other half of the time I'm having to stop myself from killing him because he keeps trying to get himself killed." She shakes her head. " _ Anyway,  _ my point is that he did this entirely on his own, and I had nothing to do with it, and that's that."

"Well, either way, I'm more grateful than you know," Pamela replies. "This partnership will go a long way to helping us provide more services. We might even be able to expand the shelter."

Darcy chews her lip. "Pammy," she says, "it's a good thing that you're doing. I want you to know that. And... regardless of everything else, I'm proud of you. I'm proud of what you do." She swallows hard. "You're a good person."

"Darcy," Pamela says softly, "you are, too."

Darcy gives a watery, humorless chuckle. "I'm really not," she admits. "Maybe I used to be, but I'm not any more. I've done awful things, Pam, and never felt much remorse for them. If any." She shakes her head. "Just because I do good things now doesn't make up for what I did before."

"You did what you did before because somebody made you do it," Pamela replies, and her voice this time is firm. "Just from what little you've told me, I know this. And if you do something because somebody's standing over you with a belt, threatening to beat you if you don't do it, that's not the same thing as doing it because you want to do it."

Darcy's eyes close, and she thinks about standing in Lukin's office in Dresden. She thinks about the shark's grin on his face when he said  _ I am perfectly content that you should remain together as a team, for as long as your service continues. _ She thinks about Karpov, who explicitly called out the deal that she had with Lukin and who made sarcastic comments in his file notes and called them both Pinocchios. 

She thinks about Pierce, and the fact that it had been Pierce's violation of that understood agreement that made them rebel, that made them turn against their masters and walk away, leaving a burning bank building behind as their resignation letter. It wasn't the threat to themselves as individuals but the looming prospect of total erasure and separation - that was the line that the Winter Soldier and his Snow Maiden would not allow to be crossed.

"It wasn't me that they threatened to beat," she admits. When Pamela makes an interrogative sort of noise, Darcy explains a thing that she's never acknowledged before to anyone who wasn't James. "It wasn't me they threatened. At least, not to me. We understood, you see, James and I. That we were permitted to be together, even to remember each other, only because of our continued cooperation. If I misbehaved, it wasn't necessarily my neck on the line. They might torture him, or separate us, or even wipe our memories of one another. And for him, vice versa; if he was out of line, they would visit his punishment upon me."

"You see?" Pamela says. "That isn't cooperation. That's terrorism. You only did what they told you to do because if you didn't, they would hurt him or take him away. You can't be held accountable for something you did under those circumstances."

Darcy gives a soft, hollow laugh. "I'm sure the families of the people I killed would like to disagree, but we'll table it for now." She takes a deep breath. "So, what else is going on? Let's talk about something that isn't death and destruction."

"Well, I was actually wondering if you and James would like to come for dinner later this week."

"Oh, um." Darcy flounders for a moment, not having expected that. "I, uh. I guess? When?"

"Thursday," Pamela replies, and it isn't a question. Darcy bites her lip and shoots off a text to James's cell phone.

"I'm checking with James," Darcy says. "I don't know if he has anything planned."

"Okay. I was thinking about grilling. Unless you're vegetarians. You're not vegetarians, are you?"

"No," Darcy assures her with a laugh. "We'll eat almost anything. One of the benefits of never knowing where you're going to wake up next is that you learn to be flexible about what you're willing to call food."

There's a long pause before Pamela says, "I'm... fairly sure I don't want to know what the grossest thing is that you've ever eaten, so I'm not going to ask."

"I absolutely  _ promise _ you that you don't want to know the answer to that question," Darcy replies firmly. "So even if you asked, I wouldn't tell you." She feels the reply arrive from James and checks it.  _ Thursday's fine, _ it reads, and she passes that along. "What time?"

"Oh, how about six-thirty?" Pamela says. "Does that work for you?"

"Yeah, that'll be fine. Where do you live?"

"You don't already know?" Pamela asks, a wry little twist to her voice.

Darcy chuckles. "Actually, I don't," she says. "I could find out, but it seemed more polite to wait and let you tell me."

"Darcy Lewis worried about politeness?" Pamela teases. "Will wonders never cease! Your mother must be rolling over right now."

Darcy considers this. "Was I rude?" she asks. "That's awkward."

"Not really  _ rude _ , exactly," Pamela replies after a moment's consideration. "We were young, and kids are thoughtless. But your mother despaired of you ever learning proper table manners."

Darcy winces, but laughs anyway. "Yeah, I'm still not good at remembering to keep my elbows off the table. James is always threatening to steal one of the tiny shock prods from the lab and use it on me."

Pamela snorts. "I feel like that's a tactic your mother would have approved of." There's a voice in the background on her end of the line, and she says, "Oh, Darcy, I have to go. I'll text you the address. See you on Thursday! The kids are going to be  _ so  _ excited!" And she hangs up before Darcy has a chance to do much more than splutter.

~*~

Thursday in the city is sweltering, but Pamela and her husband live in the suburbs - Teaneck, New Jersey, to be precise. James and Darcy borrow Steve's motorcycle and zip north through the traffic on FDR to the George Washington Bridge. From there, they bypass the I-95 expressway in favor of the ground route, to avoid the heavier rush hour traffic. The streets grow a bit quieter as they get further out of the city. Darcy, who is riding pillion, points out the turns to James and he takes them, and before long, they are puttering past massive homes set back from wide, tree-lined streets. The lawns are all wide and well-manicured, and the whole area has an air of well-bred, blue-blooded stateliness about it that makes Darcy, at least, a little uncomfortable. "Shit, Chefchen," she says as they turn onto Pamela's street. "We're gonna get arrested for being out here."

"Nah," James says, laughing. "We're white, so it's okay."

Darcy snorts. "Right, of course." She points at an imposing stone-fronted three-story Tudor revival with a circular driveway. "That's it."

James lets out a low whistle as he pulls up the drive. "Goddamn, кукла," he says as he kills the engine. "Guess we're gonna get to see how the other half lives."

"Guess so," Darcy murmurs. They mount the steps and head for the front door, but before Darcy can ring the bell, the door flies open. A girl of about twelve, with a shock of red hair and a thick crop of freckles, stands there in the doorway for a moment, blinking at them. "Hi," Darcy says. "We're looking for the Shores? Are we in the right place?"

The girl blinks at them for another moment before turning toward the interior of the house and bellowing, " _ Mooooooooooom! _ "

A moment later, a woman comes into the wide entryway through an open doorway. She is dressed in blue jeans and a red-and-white striped rugby shirt, and her brown hair is cut in a shoulder-length bob. For Darcy, it's a little bit like looking into a slightly-older mirror. The woman smiles. "Hi," she says. "You must be Darcy and James."

Darcy nods, holding out her hand to shake. "That's us," she says.

"Well, I'm Darcy, too," the young woman replies, shaking her hand. "Though I go by DeeDee. This is my daughter, Chelsea."

"Nice to meet you," Darcy murmurs, giving Chelsea a smile. The girl blinks at Darcy but doesn't speak.

DeeDee shakes hands with James as well, then steps aside. "Well, come on in; no sense standing on the front porch like Mormons." She smirks.

Darcy and James step into the tiled entry, and Chelsea leans out the door. "Is that your motorcycle?" she asks. "Will you take me for a ride on it?"

James grins. "Actually, I borrowed it from my friend Steve," he admits. "And maybe a little bit later, if your mom says it's okay."

"We'll see," DeeDee says when Chelsea turns huge, pleading eyes on her. Over the child's head, she rolls her eyes at Darcy, who stifles a grin. "Now, shut the door and come on back outside."

Chelsea obeys, taking off like a shot through the house. They can hear shouting, and then the slamming of a door, which makes DeeDee wince. She sighs. "That kid," she says ruefully, "is going to drive me to drink one of these days."

"She seems okay," Darcy offers as DeeDee leads the way through the massive, beautifully decorated house.

"She's actually a great kid," DeeDee admits. "She's just got impulse control problems and the attention span of a cocker spaniel on crack."

James and Darcy both chuckle at that. DeeDee leads them into the kitchen, where several men and women are gathered around a large round table. The conversation abruptly breaks off, and there are several swift intakes of breath as people's eyes shift between the two women. "Damn," says one of the men at the table, a muscular blond in a red tee shirt. "There's no question, is there?"

"Nope," DeeDee replies. "Everybody, this is our cousin Darcy and her husband, James. Darcy, James, this is everybody." She grins, then goes around the table introducing each person by name. Jacob, the eldest and the one who had spoken, sits beside his equally blond and muscular husband Mike; Andrew and his tiny, dark-haired wife Corrinne are tucked into the back corner; Tom and his Hispanic wife Luisa are in the far corner, and DeeDee's husband Lance, easily identifiable by the bright red hair and shock of freckles that match Chelsea's, is sitting on the outside.

"Mom and Dad are out on the patio getting the grill started," Andrew announces. "Somebody should probably go tell them that the prodigals are here."

DeeDee rolls her eyes. "No, please, allow me." She slouches toward the kitchen door to the accompaniment of her siblings' laughter.

There is a moment of silence around the table as everyone studies Darcy and James, and they in return study everyone else. Finally, Darcy takes the plunge. "So," she says. "Hi, I'm your cousin."

Tom laughs softly. "You definitely are that," he agrees. "I can't believe how much you look like DeeDee."

"It's freakish and weird," Corrinne agrees, smiling to take any potential sting out of the words. She tilts her head. "So, Pamela didn't tell us much about where you've been, but I think we all sort of gotten the impression that you'd maybe been abducted by aliens...?" She lets the sentence trail off into a question, and the others titter nervously.

Darcy pulls one of the barstools out from the nearby kitchen island and seats herself. "It wasn't aliens," she explains, "but it might as well have been." She takes a deep breath. "You've all heard of HYDRA, of course, and how Captain America died trying to stop them?"

"Well, sort of died," Mike says.

Darcy nods, conceding the point. "Right. But the important part is the one about HYDRA - evil Nazi scientists." At the nods of comprehension that come from around the table, she launches into a heavily redacted explanation of her kidnap and subsequent events.

By the time she's done, her cousins are all looking from her to James and back again with mingled fear and respect. "That's incredible," DeeDee says softly. "I just... I can't imagine surviving all of that and coming out... even remotely sane."

"It's down to James, really," Darcy admits. "If it hadn't been for him, I don't think I would be."

"Same goes, кукла," James replies, rubbing at her back with his metal hand. "You know what I always say."

"What's that?" Corrinne asks.

James smiles. "I tell anybody who'll listen that she saved me," he admits. "I ain't ashamed of it. Maybe I should be, on account of what they did to her, but I was walkin' dead when they dragged her in and it was like she breathed the life back into me."

Darcy feels her cheeks go warm as the others titter and aww, and she elbows James very gently in the ribs. "Save the poetics," she says. "Drama queen." James merely shrugs in reply, but he's smiling.

Before the quiet can be broken by a new topic of conversation, the back door opens again and Pamela leans in. "Darcy, there you are!" she exclaims. "You've met the kids."

"Yeah, we were just all getting to know each other," Darcy replies, smiling.

"Good. If any of them are rude, feel free to smack them around." Pamela grins. "Come outside; Kenneth has the grill tamed, finally, so you can say hello and actually get a response."

Darcy and James both stand, heading for the door. Pamela's eyes narrow. "Nobody offered you a drink?" she asks. She points a finger at DeeDee. "That's four hours in the stocks for you, young lady!"

"Aw,  _ Moooooom, _ " DeeDee wails, and everyone laughs. 

Outside, Darcy pauses and looks around at what her cousins had referred to as the patio. "Jesus Christ, Pammy," she blurts. "Come up in the world, haven't you?"

The "patio" is a good fifteen feet deep and extends the length of the house. The half of it that is roofed – outside the kitchen and down toward the left hand side – contains a huge sitting area and an outdoor kitchen, with a wet bar, a gas grill and range, a small refrigerator, and a fully plumbed sink. The unroofed half boasts a hot tub big enough for six people and a fire pit. There is a swimming pool just off the far right hand end, complete with diving board and waterslide. The rest of the yard is wide and grassy, and a small army of children are running wild between the pool, the open grass, and the elaborate play structure at the far end of the yard.

Pamela sighs, looking around. "It  _ is _ a little ostentatious, isn't it?"

"A little?" Darcy repeats. " _ A little? _ "

"Okay, a lot," Pamela admits. "Kenneth's got a thing about keeping up appearances. I blame his mother." She sighs. "Anyway. Yes. Kenneth is a mechanical engineer."

"Beaucoup bucks," James comments.

"Plus beaucoup," Pamela acknowledges.

"Well, I'm glad we got that out of the way," Darcy says. She strides forward toward the thin, balding man at the grill. "You must be Kenneth. I've heard so much about you." She offers her hand and her best smile.

Kenneth smiles back nervously and gingerly shakes her hand. "Hi, yes, I'm Kenneth. You're Darcy, right?"

"Yes. And this is my husband, James." She reaches out and pulls James over to stand beside her.

"James, right." Kenneth shakes James's hand as well. Then he tilts his head, just a little bit. "What was it that you do, again?" he asks.

Pamela, behind him, rolls her eyes ostentatiously. James just smiles. "I work in Research and Development at Stark Industries," he says. "I do alpha level stress testing and quality control, and occasionally I provide input and feedback to the designers."

Kenneth grins broadly. "So you break things."

James grins back. "I break things."

"With the understanding of things like nondisclosure agreements," Kenneth says, getting a gleam in his eye, "what can you tell me about the things you break?"

"Oh, well," James says, hoisting himself up to sit on the counter.

Pamela crosses to the little refrigerator. "James, Darcy, beer?"

Darcy nods, but James says, "Just water for me, thanks. I'm driving."

Pamela tosses James a bottle of water and brings Darcy a beer, and as James and Kenneth settle into a discussion of new technologies being developed by their respective firms, she steers Darcy down the patio to sit around the currently-cold firepit. "So," she says as they seat themselves, "talk to me about this fundraising gala that Tony Stark has suddenly decided to throw for us."

Darcy blinks. "Um?" she says, intelligently. "I'm... not actually involved in all that. I do cybersecurity for Stark Industries; the charity work is being done through the Maria Stark Foundation. It's... okay, I mean, it's not unconnected, but it's not anything I'm actually involved in."

Pamela leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees, and gives Darcy a look that Darcy imagines must quail her children and grandchildren. "I'm going to ask you this again," she says, "and this time, I'd prefer it if you didn't blow smoke up my ass."

Darcy takes a deep breath. "All right," she says carefully, "why don't you tell me what's brought on this line of questioning, and I'll answer you as honestly as I can."

Pamela says, "Don't lie to me, Darcy. If you can't answer something, say so, but don't lie to me."

"All right," Darcy replies. "I promise not to lie to you."

"There is a small contingent of my Board of Directors that is trying to demand that I reject this partnership with the Stark Foundation," Pamela says.

Darcy nods slowly. "I... can't say that I'm surprised to hear that."

Pamela nods, her expression grim. "I'm going to assume that the real reason for this isn't the Maria Stark Foundation, but is actually Stark himself and probably also the rest of the Avengers."

"That... would be a fair assumption," Darcy agrees.

"Mmm- _ hmm. _ " Pamela watches the children play for a long moment. "There's someone on my board that's dirty, isn't there?" 

Darcy snorts softly. "You're going to have to be more specific," she says. "Three of your board members made their money doing explicitly illegal things and two more inherited from people who did explicitly illegal things. So, when you say  _ dirty, _ what exactly do you mean?"

"There's dirty," Pamela says thoughtfully, her eyes still on the children, "and then there's the kind of dirty that gets Avengers involved. There's illegal, and then there's the kind of illegal that ends with Captain America and Iron Man blowing up an international intelligence agency in the middle of Washington, D.C."

"That's true," Darcy agrees.

Pamela looks over at her. "Be honest with me," she says, her voice soft but steady. "Are the children in danger?"

Darcy considers the question, giving it all the weight that it deserves. Finally she says, "No, I don't think so. I honestly think that the connection is coincidental. I told Tony that it seems like the kind of gross irony that... that kind of person would appreciate, but the individual in question has been in that position for longer than I've been awake this time, and would not have been in a position to know my real identity before this. I don't think you need to worry about this." Then she reaches out, taking Pamela's hand. "And there's something else I want you to understand as well." She waits until Pamela is looking at her, and the Snow Maiden presents herself at the forefront. She sees Pamela's eyes widen when she recognizes the difference. When that happens, the Snow Maiden speaks, and her voice is very low and her tone is very firm. "If anyone threatens my family," she says, "I will kill them."

Pamela swallows hard. "All right," she says softly.

From the grill, Kenneth calls out, "Burgers are done! Who's hungry?"

Darcy lets the Snow Maiden slip away again, and she gives Pamela a gentle smile, squeezing her hand. "Don't worry yourself, okay?" she says softly. "This will all be over soon."

Pamela takes a long, shaky breath. "I hope you're right," she murmurs.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is, guys! The final chapter! I hope you've enjoyed this ride as much as I have!

**August 2013**

**New York, NY**

"You look fantastic, кукла," James says as he spins her around on the dance floor in the ballroom of the St. Regis Hotel. "That dress is amazing."

"Why thank you, Chefchen," Darcy replies, fluttering her eyelashes coquettishly. "I thought you might like it."

"It reminds me of the bad old days," he admits, pulling her in close against him, resting their joined hands on his chest. "Where did you find it?"

"Pepper found it," Darcy admits. "I just knew I had to have it as soon as I saw it."

The dress is, in fact, strongly reminiscent of an early version of her tactical suit, if far less protective. It is a sleeveless corset dress made almost entirely of leather straps with some strategically placed lace panels for something that approaches modesty but only enough to give it a scathing glance in passing. Its hem barely reaches the middle of her thigh. Her shoes are over-the-knee leather boots with ridiculously tall heels - he's not actually sure how she's managing to walk in them, much less dance, but she gives no indication that she's having any trouble at all. Both dress and shoes are, as she cheerfully put it, "as black as the cockles of my soul," and he isn't ashamed to admit that he's been trying to figure out how to get her somewhere more private for most of the night. It wouldn't take very long; he's been half-hard since the moment he saw her in it and he's pretty sure she's not wearing any underwear.

She's made it a point to dance with as many men as she could tonight, including all of the Avengers - even Steve, who still hasn't learned to dance but managed a simple box step with her careful guidance. She's also danced with several of the big-ticket donors of the evening, including the husband of the HYDRA op who is the evening's target.

She's playing a part tonight: a  _ nouveau riche _ young heiress with more money than morals, money chasing more money or possibly prestige. After dancing with several different men – all the richest marks in the room - she'd flirted  _ hard _ with Steve, playing for the cameras, and when he gently but firmly turned her down (whispering in her ear an invitation to come to Clint's and play Mario Kart after the event), she turned her attentions to James, making it seem to observers that she'd been skillfully redirected. 

James isn't ashamed to admit (at least to her, in the privacy of their apartment) that he likes it when she plays this kind of part. He's only human, and she knows she's sexy as hell. The only thing he doesn't like about it is the one necessary concession: the soul mark that runs all the way across her collarbone has been skillfully covered with makeup. He understands the necessity, intellectually, but the part of him deep inside that lives for nothing more than her howls in rage at the thought of anyone  _ not _ knowing that she is his. She'll make it up to him later.

"We need to go out dancin' some night soon," he murmurs against her temple.

"Yes," she murmurs back, smiling up at him. "That club."

"That club," he agrees.  _ That club _ is one in Harlem that they stumbled on not long ago; it had been dark and smoky and the music hard with a heavy beat, and they had ground together on the dance floor until they were both desperate for each other, and then kept going until they couldn't stand it any more, and then  _ kept going _ until he broke and dragged her out into the alley and fucked her hard up against the crumbling brick.

She dances one more song with him – making eye contact with the mark's husband over his shoulder the entire time – and then pulls away, a teasing grin on her face. She makes her way to the bar, orders a cosmopolitan, and waits. Sure enough, like a moth to a flame, the mark's husband – his name is Elliott Holtzer – makes his way to her side, orders a whiskey, and then leans against the bar.

"You don't want that one," he says casually.

She raises an eyebrow at him over the rim of her glass. "Don't I? He's pretty enough, and he's Stark-adjacent."

"The Avengers are a dead end. They're do-gooders. That one won't understand your needs; he won't understand why you need pretty things and attention. He won't understand that you need to be seen, that you want the bright lights and the nights on the town. He'll want quiet nights at home and to avoid the spotlight, and he'll expect you to understand that running off to fight the good fight is much more important than your reservations at Le Cirque."

"Hmm," Darcy says, casting her eyes across the room at James, who is now dancing with Pepper. "And I suppose you have a better option for me?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," he replies.

She raises an eyebrow again and waits. He steps in closer and says, "Perhaps we could step out onto the balcony and discuss it in a more... private... environment."

She smirks, just slightly. "But whatever will your wife think?"

He snorts. "My wife has her entertainments; I have mine. I could be beneficial to you."

"All right," Darcy says. "I'm listening."

She sends JARVIS an electronic nudge, and he confirms that he's watching and recording. He also passes the nudge on to Tony, who will be Darcy's backup in case anything untoward should happen. Holtzer leads the way toward the double doors out onto the balcony that overlooks Fifth Avenue. The balcony is empty for the moment, and the two of them make their way to the railing. Darcy turns her back to the city and leans against the railing, shaking her hair back behind her shoulders to better display the assets that this asshole is mostly interested in. "So," she says, "wow me."

He smirks down at her, crowding her just a little bit. "Do you know who I am?"

"Of course I do," she replies. "You think I came into this without doing any research at all? You're Elliott Holtzer, founder and CEO of Cephalopod Records." And if  _ that _ hadn't been a tip-off that both husband and wife were loyal to HYDRA, she muses internally. 

"That's right," he replies. "So which are you, singer or actress?"

Darcy shrugs. "Autotune me hard enough and I can be either one, if I have to."

He raises an eyebrow. "You're not a performer?"

"Not really," she replies. "I guess I could be on a reality show if I had to, but I'm not very good at all that. And it doesn't really fit in well with my... shall we say, long term goals?"

He smirks. "And what exactly are those goals, sweetheart?"

She smiles. "Why, I want the same thing as every other fiery young person with a liberal arts degree and too much free time. I want to change the world for the better. I want to bring people peace and happiness. I want to get rid of all this chaos and restore...  _ order _ ." She gives him a significant look.

"Do you, now?" he asks, and suddenly his voice is as smooth as the whiskey he's been drinking. He crowds in just a little bit closer. "My dear," he says, "I am starting to get the impression that you were dancing with those other men  _ specifically _ because you wanted to get  _ my _ attention."

She giggles, twisting a lock of hair around her finger. "Would you think less of me if I said that was true?"

"Not at all," he admits, resting his free hand on her hip and leaning down to whisper into her right ear. " _ Hail HYDRA. _ "

Darcy laughs softly. "Come get him, boys."

Holtzer raises his head, looking down at her in confusion. "What?"

From behind him, Clint and Sam appear like magic out of the shadows. Before he can even try to kick up a fuss, Holtzer's hands are zip tied behind him and he's gone, spirited away to the cells in the sub-basement of Avengers Tower. No one even notices that he's gone.

~*~

Mario Kart with Clint and Steve is always fun, because nobody –  _ nobody _ – can swear like Steve Rogers who just got blue-shelled on Rainbow Road.

~*~

They give Holtzer a couple of days to think about it, and then Darcy meanders down into the sub-basement one afternoon when she doesn't have anything more pressing to do with her time. She strolls up to the opaque glass and presses the button that makes it transparent and activates the intercom. "Hi, there," she greets him.

Holtzer glares at her from his seat on the side of the single narrow college-dorm-sized bunk. His cell is about the size of a standard prison cell, and for furniture he has the bunk, a stainless steel toilet, and a sink. There is no table or chair. His clothing has also been taken from him, and he is wearing plain black hospital-style scrubs. "I want a lawyer," Holtzer declares.

"And I want a pony," Darcy replies. "Looks like we're both out of luck."

"Who the fuck are you, you lying bitch?" he demands.

"Now, now, Elliott," she replies, clicking her tongue. "I never lied to you."

"You said you were a debutante!"

"You assumed," she points out. "Just the same way as you assumed that I was an actress-model-singer-dog walker, and you assumed that I was interested in you either sexually or for money, and you assumed that when I said I was interested in world peace and bringing order to chaos that I meant I was HYDRA." She shakes her head. "You should probably stop making those kinds of assumptions."

"So who the fuck are you, then?" he demands.

She smiles. "My name is irrelevant," she says. "But you might recognize my code name. They call me the Snow Maiden."

His eyes went huge and his face pale. "What... what do you want?"

"Well, you know, like I said the other night. World peace, freedom and justice for all. I wouldn't say no to an all-expenses-paid trip to Bermuda; I've heard it's lovely this time of year." She runs a hand through her hair. "My wants are simple. Yours are a bit more complex."

He blinks in surprise. "Mine?" he says. "What do you think  _ I _ want?"

She smiles. "You want out of this cell," she says. "You want to go back to your life. You want people not to know that you're HYDRA. You'd probably kind of like to be rid of your wife, too, but you can't divorce her because she'll take half of everything  _ and _ the house in Sag Harbor, never mind that you know for sure that one of the kids isn't even yours, and you can't kill her because they can track that kind of thing really well these days and you're not a hundred percent sure that you're smart enough to pull it off. Am I right?"

He gapes at her for a long time. Then he says, "Fine. What do you want  _ with me? _ "

"We want your wife, Elliott," she says.

He gapes some more. "What?"

She smiles slightly. "That's what I'm trying to explain to you. You want to be rid of your wife without losing half or running the risk of going to jail? We can help with that. Did you know they're refitting parts of Guantanamo Bay to hold HYDRA operatives? Temporarily, you know. On the way to those CIA black sites around the world. Would you like to see her disappear into one of those? Because we would."

"Yes!" he blurts out. "What do you need? I can give you everything."

"I don't need you to give it to me," she says. "I can get it for myself. I just need you to tell me where it is and what the passcodes are."

"Everything's on a laptop that's locked up in the safe in the office," he says. "It's behind the big painting - you'll know which one." He rattles off the lock's combination. "There's three passwords to get access to everything: one to access the computer, one to access the partition, and one to access Zola."

Darcy's mouth widens in a shark's grin. "Tell me about Zola."

"It's an AI," Holtzer says, "but it thinks it's alive. Pierce said its personality was based on a World War II scientist."

"And who has access to it besides you and your wife?"

"Only a few others that I know of. Pierce, but he's dead. Stern. A couple of Russian guys. It's all on the laptop."

"I certainly hope it is, Elliott. For your sake."

~*~

Holtzer's wife isn't home when Darcy gets there, which just makes things so much easier. She's in and out in under fifteen minutes, and returns to the tower with the laptop in hand. With Holtzer's full cooperation, they access the computer and begin downloading all the information it contains about HYDRA's North American operations. Tony forwards this to Sharon Carter, who promises to ensure that it gets into the right hands.

Just to be on the safe side, Darcy also forwards it to Natasha. She hasn't been in New York since the fall of SHIELD, but she's been in touch in case she should be needed. Natasha has contacts all over the world, and some of them are even on the same side as the Avengers. After a brief discussion with the rest of the team, Darcy and Tony decide to forward the information to the X-Men and the Fantastic Four as well. "It never hurts for everyone who's on the same side to be on the same page," Steve points out, and Darcy has to agree with him. It's also true that what grows in the dark dies in the light, so it's maybe a better idea to have too many people knowing about the inner workings of HYDRA than not enough.

About a week after taking Holtzer into custody, Darcy brings him out of the cells and upstairs to a secure holding room. There, they watch live on the news as his wife is arrested by the FBI in the company of Senator Stern, who is also arrested. Holtzer watches the coverage with an expression of deep satisfaction. "Good," he says when it's over. "I'm glad that's done."

Darcy nods. "So am I," she says. She looks down at the StarkPad in her hands. It's a prop; the information she needs is in her implant. But he doesn't need to know that. "Now, according to my records, Mr. Holtzer, there are three minor children living with you and your wife. The eldest is Elliott Junior,age ten; then Melissa, age seven; and Jared, age five. Is this correct?" When he nods, she continues. "And I assume you're aware that you are not, in fact, Jared's biological father."

"I know," he growls. "I don't know who is, though."

"Not to worry," Darcy says. "We've got that information already." In fact, Jared's biological father is one of the kindergarten teachers from the private school Elliott was attending at the time; that was one of many hidden nuggets of gold that Darcy, Tony, and JARVIS mined off the laptop Holtzer gave up. She flips a page on the StarkPad, glances at a Pinterest recipe for chocolate cake in a mug, and makes a mental note to have a very serious talk with James about his taste in desserts. "And your children currently attend the Latin Grammar School in West Chelsea, is that right?"

He narrows his eyes. "Yes, why?"

Darcy pulls out her seldom-used cell phone and dials James. "Pick up the kids," she says. "We're done here."

_ "On it," _ he replies.  _ "You talked to the dad?" _

"Yeah, that's handled." Darcy has, in fact, spent the last few days making arrangements for young Jared's biological father, who is emphatically  _ not _ HYDRA, to take custody of the three children and enter a modified sort of witness protection, to hopefully give the kids a fighting chance to grow up properly, free from HYDRA's influence. "They'll be waiting on the tarmac."

_ "Got it. Moving now." _ He hangs up, and Darcy smiles at Holtzer, who is visibly freaking out. 

"Don't worry, Elliott," she says. "We've just been making arrangements for the care of your children while you're away."

"Away?" he gasps. "What are you talking about? I gave you everything you wanted!"

"You did," she replies, nodding. "You gave us your wife, who was next in line to become the Supreme Hydra on the North American continent after Stern. You gave us the locations of every HYDRA cell on this continent, and their membership rosters. You gave us enough, in fact, that we're probably going to be spending the next four or five years not just cutting heads off but burning them out from the root up." She smiles. "Personally, I call that 'job security'. So, thanks for that."

"Well?!" he demands. "You promised you'd let me go! You said you'd give me what I wanted!"

"Actually," Darcy says, "I didn't. See, your problem is that you jump to conclusions. You made assumptions about me the night we met, and you didn't listen very well when we talked that first day here. Because I didn't actually say that I'd give you everything you wanted. What I did was list off a number of things that you  _ did _ want, and then I promised to help you make sure you were rid of your wife without losing half of everything or going down for her murder. I've done that. Your wife is scheduled on a one-way trip to a CIA black site, with a brief layover in Guantanamo Bay. Unfortunately for you, you're going to be making a very similar trip, with the same stopover. On the bright side, since your ultimate destinations are different, you won't ever see her again once you leave Cuba. And honestly, I'm pretty sure they keep the prisoners segregated, so you  _ probably _ won't see her in Cuba, either."

He's gaping at her in sheer disbelief. Darcy gives him another smile, one she learned from watching Natasha. "Thank you," she says, "for your cooperation." She stands up and goes to the door, pulling it open. Sharon Carter and two of her men are standing there, waiting. "He's all yours, Agent Carter," Darcy says.

"Thank you very much," Sharon replies, giving Darcy a professional smile. The two male agents enter the room and secure Holtzer's wrists with cuffs, then drag him out, protesting and screaming threats of vengeance. Sharon rolls her eyes and starts to follow, then pauses and turns back. "Girls' night this weekend?" she asks.

"Sounds fantastic," Darcy replies. "I'll tell Jane and Pepper."

"Great," Sharon says. "I'll text you later and we'll work out the details."

~*~

When Darcy gets home that evening, James is already there. He's brought home take-out Italian for dinner, and he reports that when he turned the kids over to their new guardian and watched them get on the Stark Industries jet that was carrying them across the country to their new life on the West Coast, they were frightened and confused but generally calm. "Helped that they know the guy," he says. "Oldest one recognized him immediately, and then the younger two. So that's all right."

Darcy nods. "Good," she says simply. "We did good today."

"Yeah," he agrees. He pulls her into his arms there in the middle of the living room, and they stand together for a long moment, just holding each other. After a time, he says softly, "Have I told you today that I love you?"

"Hmm." She considers. "Yes," she says. "This morning."

"Good." He cups her cheek in his metal hand and bends down to kiss her warmly. "I don't ever want a day to go by that I don't tell you. Everything that is good in my life is you, кукла."

"And everything in mine is you, Chefchen," she murmurs back to him, her hands coming up to rest on his jaw, her fingers spreading warm over his neck. "I love you. So much that sometimes I can't breathe with it."

He holds her close, his human hand coming up to cup her head against his chest and his metal arm banding around her back. She wraps her arms around his waist and lets herself melt into him, reveling in the sheer, simple joy of holding him and being held by him. For so long, all they had was each other; now, even though they have so much more, they keep finding that each other is all they need.

Darcy closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, letting that feeling of  _ home _ and  _ safety _ fill her. And a memory bubbles its way to the surface.

She raises her head and looks up at him. "Oh," she breathes.

He gives her a questioning look. "Oh?"

"I remember," she says. "I remember it now."

"What do you remember?"

"I remember meeting you," she says. She closes her eyes, calling the details forward. "We were on a road trip, going to... something. I don't know. Detroit, but I don't know why. And we'd stopped at the rest stop for gas and something to eat. And I was bored and went outside, and I heard the shots -  _ pop, pop, pop. _ And I came to investigate, and there you were. You were breaking the gun down when you looked up and saw me."

He runs a finger across her soul mark and whispers the words into her ear. "It's called a Dragunov, кукла. Don't worry, I doubt you'll ever see one again."

She smiles, running the palm of her hand down the inside of his right arm. "Those are the words on my soul mark. I - I think you're my soul mate."

He closes his eyes, pressing his forehead against hers in apology. "I'm so sorry," he whispers. "I didn't know how badly I was hurting you."

"I know," she promises. "I forgive you."

He strokes her cheek. "What else do you remember?"

She smiles. "I remember that they locked me up in a tiny cell with only you for company, and I was terrified, but then you told me that you weren't going to hurt me, and you held me close and comforted me while I cried." She pulls him down to her and kisses him. "I remember that when I was more frightened than I had ever been in my life, you were an oasis of safety and protection, and you took care of me even when you didn't know how. You have always done the best that you could for me, my Chefchen, and I have always known that you loved me."

He wraps his arms tightly around her again, bowing his head over hers. When he releases her, his eyes are shining and hers are too, and she takes his hands in hers and leads him down the hall to their bedroom. The food he brought home gets very cold, and later they microwave it and eat it curled around each other on the couch while an old episode of  _ Dog Cops _ plays on the television.

~*~

A few days later, Tony demands her presence in his lab.

She strolls out that direction and sticks her head in the door. "I was busy, Stark," she tells him shortly. "What do you want?"

"I want you to  _ see _ what I've  _ invented, _ " he says, and he has that look of manic glee about him that makes her instantly wary.

"When is the last time you ate or slept?"

He shrugs. "I think I had a PowerBar a couple of hours ago."

"That was this morning, sir," JARVIS corrects him.

Tony waves a hand. "Whatever. I'm actually  _ done _ for now, so I'm going to go and eat actual food and collapse on my actual face in an actual bed for an actual eight or ten hours. But I wanted to show you first!"

Darcy sighs. "Fine, show me. Then you go."

He pulls up a display hologram and shows her a massive wall of code text. "I developed a new system for hunting HYDRA and the Zola remnants," he explains. "It's going to spread out via the regular internet as well as that internal network, and it's going to find them everywhere they are, and it's going to report back, and we're going to use it to wipe them completely off the planet."

"Excellent, Tony!" Darcy says, and she means it. This will help exponentially in the hunt for and fight against their widespread and well-hidden enemy. "I can't wait until you get it up and running."

"Me, either," he says. "I just need to clean up a few code bits and make sure it's all polished, and I should be able to start compiling. But I need sleep first, because I've been seeing double for a couple of hours."

She begins to chivvy him out of the lab. "Come on, then," she says. "Let's go."

He goes cooperatively, but then stops at the door, turning to face her. He's nearly gray with exhaustion, but his eyes are still gleaming. "I forgot!" he says. "I forgot to tell you the best part!"

"What's that, Tony?" she asks, smiling indulgently.

"I thought up the  _ best name _ for it," he says, gripping her upper arms. "You're gonna love it."

"Okay," she says. "I'm game. What's the name?"

"You're gonna love it," he says again. He prefaces his announcement with jazz hands. "I'm going to call it ULTRON."


End file.
